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Large White Bethlehem Star Tree Topper is 11.5 inches tall. The Bethlehem star tree topper is 8.5 inches wide. The white Bethlehem star tree topper has a wire coil for the top branch of the Christmas tree. The total height of the white Bethlehem star tree topper is 16 inches. The white Bethlehem star and wire coil are covered in clear plastic beads to enhance it’s effect.
What Are Stars Made Of?
Stars are very hot masses of gas. They seem to be made of about the same elements as those we find in the earth. These elements are not in the same proportions as they are in the earth. Stars differ in the proportions of the elements they contain, too, but, in general, the lighter elements are the most common in all the stars. Hydrogen, helium, calcium and iron are the most common and a large amount of carbon is found in some stars.
We study the light from a star to find what it is made of. This light tells us only about the elements that are at or near the surface. We do not know much about what stars are like inside.
Why Stars Shine.
Starlight comes to us from almost unbelievable distances. If your eyes are sharp, you can see the faint haze of a great group of stars, the Andromeda Nubula. This group is so far away that its light, which you now see, started from the stars almost two million years ago.
How can light travel for two million years to reach our eyes? Scientists think that he light is produce in the stars by the changing of hydrogen into helium. When this happens, a small amount of matter is destroyed. But the matter reappears as a tremendous amount of energy, the energy of light and of kinds of radiation that cannot be seen. All these radiations are streams of extremely tiny bullet like particles. Scientists call these particles photons. Photons or rays of light shoot out from the stars in all directions and vibrate or zigzag as they go. There is no air and practically nothing else out is space, so there is nothing to stop these speedy light bullets. They keep going and going until they hit some solid object like the earth. These zigzagging light bullets affect our eyes and we see a star.
Will the Stars Keep Shining Forever?
Scientists believe that our sun will go on shining in much the same way it does now for about 35 billion years more. Then the amount of light and heat it shoots our will get less and less, as it finishes burning up its fuel. Even so, it will probably keep shining with lessening brilliance for another 100 billion years or so.
Our sun is a rather slow atomic furnace. Other stats seem to be using up their hydrogen fuel much more rapidly. Most of the really brilliant stars pour out energy about 5,000 times faster than our sun does. These stars seem to be burning up faster, too and they probably quit shining billions of years before our sun dies out.
Why Stars Shine Only At Night.
The sune is so near the earth and its light is so bright, that we cannot see the light from the stars in the daytime. The stars are still out there and their light keeps streaming to earth. But the sun’s light is many thousands of times brighter than starlight and it spreads out through the atmosphere, coloring it blue. In all this brightness, the light from the stars is lost.
Movement of the Stars.
It is the motion of air that makes the stars seem to twinkle and it is the motion of the earth that makes the stars seem to rise in the east, move across the heavens and set in the west. This seeming daily motion of the stars is the result of the earth’s spinning around on its axis.
What seems to be another motion of the stars is also the result of the earth’s movements. You may have noticed that different star groups or constellations appear overhead at different seasons of the year. This is because the earth is rushing along in a great circle around the sun. So, at one time of the year, we look out at nighttime on one part of the heavens. Six months later, our earth has moved to the other side of the sun. Then we look out at nighttime on the other part of the heavens.
The stars, themselves, do move. Even our sun is rushing through space at a speed of about 43,000 miles an hour. We cannot see it go, however, because our earth and all the other planets are being carried right along with it.
All the stars in the universe seem to be rushing through space. And they all seem to be rushing away from each other, much as if they were dots of paint on a balloon that was being blown up. The farther away they are, the faster they seem to be moving.