So, This is the brightest thing in our whole universe.

This is the brightest thing in our whole universe

1: SUN

Well what and Why Do We Study about the Sun?

Here is what all of us should know about the sun.

OUR 10 SUN FACTS:

1. The sun is a star. This makes it extremely important for life on Earth. The sun provides us with energy, which brings life on our planet. It defines the seasons, the harvests, and even the sleep patterns of all living creatures on Earth.

2. The sun is the closest star to our planet. Imagine two cars on the road during the night with their headlights on. One car is closer to you and the other one is far away. Which headlights would seem brighter and bigger? That explains why we see the sun so big and bright. It is simply the nearest star to Earth.

3. Remember! The Earth orbits around the sun.

4. The sun is way bigger than the Earth. In fact its radius is 109 times bigger than the radius of the Earth. For those of you who are curious, the sun’s Radius is 696,000km and the Earth’s radius is 6, 376km.

5. DON’T TOUCH THE SUN! IT’S HOT! The sun’s average surface temperature is 5700 C. Compare that to the Earth’s average temperature, which is 20 C. 

6. The sun is 150 million km (93 million miles) away from the Earth.

7. How old is the sun? Can you imagine 4.5 billion years?

8. We know that the Earth’s structure consists of different layers. The sun also has layers but unlike the Earth, the sun is entirely gaseous; there is no solid surface.

9. The sun rotates on its axis approximately once every 26 days. The sun is made of gas, which is why its different parts rotate at different speeds. The fastest rotation is around the equator and the slowest rotation is at the sun’s polar regions (more than 30 days).

10. The sun changes. No matter when or where we look at the sun, we will always see something interesting. Scientists observe these changes by watching the sunspots. They increase and decrease on a regular cycle of about 10.8 years.

You’ve probably heard star names, such as Polaris or Betelgeuse. But what about our star? Does the sun have a name, and if so what is it?

We all know that the sun is rather bright (understatement of the year), and while it is certainly the brightest thing in the visible sky, is certainly isn’t the brightest thing in the universe? Before we try to figure out what is, let’s just clarify what the term ‘brightness’ actually means.

Our Sun is far from the brightest thing in the universe, something that you’ll begin to realize as you continue reading. The Sun’s close proximity to Earth is why it looks like the brightest thing in our sky, but it's not.

2: R136a1

R136a1, hundreds of times the mass of our sun and millions of times brighter, was spotted in a star-making nebula some 22,000 light-years away.

Astronomers have discovered the most massive stars known, including one at more than 300 times the mass of our sun – double the size that scientists thought heavyweight stars could reach.

These colossal stars are millions of times brighter than the sun and shed mass through very powerful winds.

The stellar discovery, which represents the first time that these hulking stars were individually identified, could help astronomers understand the behavior of massive stars, and how large they can be at birth.

This unceremoniously named star is 256 times more massive than our sun. It might not be the biggest star by volume, but it is extremely massive and also the brightest star out there. This behemoth is 8.6 million times brighter than our Sun.

If something that bright was as close to us as the Sun, the Earth would be a thousand times hotter than it is now, and we would never have had a shot at life . The phrase ‘brighter than the Sun’ doesn’t have the same ring to it now, does it?

R136a1 is a Wolf-Rayet star that is not located in our galaxy but is in the NGC 2070 open cluster in the Tarantula Nebula. R136a1 is the brightest star in Dorado based on the Hipparcos 2007 apparent magnitude. The star can not be seen by the naked eye, you need a telescope to see it.

R136a1 with its catchy easy to roll off the tongue name is one of the massive stars in the universe. I say universe because it is not in the The Milky Way. The star is situated within the Tarantual Nebula, a massive globular star cluster. The Tarantual Nebula is not in the Milky Way but in a satellite galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The current largest widely recognised star in the universe is UY Scuti. R136a1 is the most massive, defined by having the biggest mass of all the stars so far looked at. There could be a bigger more massive star out there but we`ve not discovered it, it could be in a galaxy far far away (sounds like stars wars doesn`t it.). The star is believed to have grown to such a size by merging with other stars, cannabalized them in other words.

Physical Properties (Temperature, Radius) of R136a1

R136a1 has a spectral type of WN5h. This means the star is a Wolf-Rayet star. R136a1 lies at a distance of 163,000.00 light years away from our Sun and our planet Earth or to put it another way, 49,974.96 parsecs away from the Sun. The star has a B-V Colour Index of 1 which means the star's temperature has been calculated using information at being 4,973 Kelvin.

R136a1 has been calculated as 28.80 times bigger than the Sun.The Sun's radius is 695,800km, therefore the star's radius is an estimated 20,039,040.00.km.

3: SUPERNOVA

In June last year, astronomers witnessed a brilliant cosmic flash thought to be The most powerful Supernova on record– an explosion of intense brightness that at its peak was 20 times brighter than the total light output of the entire Milky Way.

But new observations suggest that this freak cosmic event – called ASASSN-151H– wasn't a supernova after all, but something even rarer: the death throes of a star that came too close to a supermassive black hole, and was torn apart by it.

Ordinarily, when a star with enough mass reaches the end of its natural life, it becomes a Supernova, caused by either running out of fuel or accumulating too much matter.

These are the biggest explosions in space, so ASASSN–15lh's extreme luminosity – twice as bright as the pervious record Holder – fascinated the space community.

A single gamma ray burst can emit as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun does in its whole lifetime of 10 billion years. If such a beam were to strike Earth, even from a distance of a million light years, astronomers predict that it could deplete our ozone layer by 25%, causing mass extinction. However, these events are very brief, lasting for only a few minutes, and in some cases, just some milliseconds. Although brighter than the brightest stars, these still aren’t the heavyweights of the universe.

4: QUASARS

Monster quasar shines 429 trillion times brighter than the sun.

Astronomers have discovered a black hole more massive than any detected before, producing the brightest known quasar in the universe.

A monster supermassive black hole at the heart of a quasar in the distant universe. Scientists say the newfound black hole SDSS J010013.02+280225.8 is the largest and brightest ever found.

Astronomers have discovered the largest and most luminous black hole ever seen — an ancient monster with a mass about 12 billion times that of the sun — that dates back to when the universe was less than 1 billion years old.

It remains a mystery how back hole could have grown so huge in such a relatively brief time after the dawn of the universe, researchers say.

Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk in the hearts of most, if not all, large galaxies. The largest black holes found so far in the nearby universe have masses more than 10 billion times that of the sun. In comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is thought to have a mass only 4 million to 5 million times that of the sun. [The strangest black hole in the universe]

Paradoxically, the brightest things in the universe exist only because of the darkest things in the universe – black holes. By definition, a black hole is dark, but it also is unimaginably massive. Owing to its huge mass, its gravitational force is also huge – so huge, in fact, that even light cannot escape its field. This makes them impossible to see, because in order to see something, light needs to be reflected from it. This is why black holes are so dark by nature. This gravitational field does not let anything nearby escape; sometimes, stars in close proximity to black holes are inexorably pulled towards them. The tremendous amounts of energy generated in the process of black holes swallowing stars is anything but dark.