Sirius, with its surface at a temperature of 18,000 degrees F, is so hot that it glows blue. What happens if a star is even hotter than blue Sirius?

Thus, astronomers can identify what kinds of stuff are in stars from the lines they find in the star’s spectrum. This type of study is called spectroscopy. The science of spectroscopy is quite sophisticated.

blue

When the star is low in the night sky, the star’s light must travel through more of the Earth’s atmosphere to reach our eyes. The atmosphere refracts the star’s light, similar to how a crystal creates a rainbow effect with the sunlight. So we see Capella’s light as red and green flashes.

Polaris

Stars make their own light, just like our sun (the sun is a star — the closest star to Earth). But the stars are very, very far away from our solar system so they appear to be very tiny to us, even though up close they are large. They reflect the light of the sun in the same way our moon reflects sunlight.

Speeding outward from the Earth and moon system, you pass the orbits of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. From all of these worlds, Earth looks like a star, which gets fainter as you get farther away.

In addition, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, niobium, molybdenum, lanthanum, europium, tungsten, and gold have been found in trace amounts. It is quite possible that in some places these materials may be concentrated enough to be mined economically.

Chunks of diamonds may be floating in hydrogen and helium fluid deep in the atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter. What’s more, at even lower depths, the extreme pressure and temperature can melt the precious gem, literally making it rain liquid diamond, researchers said.

Astronomers aren’t being poetic when they say this star is a diamond. Scientists have identified what is possibly the coldest white dwarf ever detected. In fact, this dim stellar corpse is so cold that its carbon has crystallized, effectively forming a diamond the size of Earth, astronomers said.

This “diamond rain” would convert potential energy into heat and help drive the convection that generates Neptune’s magnetic field. There are some uncertainties in how well the experimental results apply to Uranus and Neptune. Water and hydrogen mixed with the methane may alter the chemical reactions.

Following the successful flybys of Jupiter by the Pioneer and Voyager probes, NASA launched a mission to orbit the giant planet. Named after Galileo Galilei, who first spied Jupiter’s four largest moons through a telescope, the Galileo probe was launched in October 1989, and arrived at Jupiter in December 1995.

Surface. As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn’t have a true surface. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn’t be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

12 years