In which nebula do we live?
The closest nebula to us is the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), pictured above. It is 650 light years away and about 6 light years across. If you’re wondering, a light year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum over the course of one year, which is 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion km).
What causes a nebula to form?
The Short Answer: A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space. Some nebulae (more than one nebula) come from the gas and dust thrown out by the explosion of a dying star, such as a supernova. Other nebulae are regions where new stars are beginning to form.
What happens when a nebula collapses?
FLATTENING: The solar nebula has flattened into a disk. This flattening is a natural consequence of collisions between particles in a spinning cloud. When the cloud collapses, these different clumps collide and merge, resulting in a flattened rotating disk.
What happens to the angular momentum of the star after it collapses?
And remember that angular momentum is conserved. So if a rotating cloud collapses (r gets smaller) than it must spin faster (v gets bigger). How does rotation affect collapse? It adds a centripetal force term to the collapse.
What happened to the sun’s angular momentum?
The Sun is estimated to contain 99.86% of the total mass of the original nebula from which it formed, packed into a much smaller diameter. So the Sun has angular momentum from revolving around the galactic center, as well as from rotating around its own axis.
What causes a nebula gas cloud to collapse?
Irregularities in the density of the gas causes a net gravitational force that pulls the gas molecules closer together. Some astronomers think that a gravitational or magnetic disturbance causes the nebula to collapse. As the gases collect, they lose potential energy, which results in an increase in temperature.
What does angular momentum have to do with star formation?
Several gravitational effects can contribute to the redistribution of angular momentum in a forming stellar system. The forming stars can at an early stage lose orbital energy and angular momentum to the surrounding gas by gravitational drag, causing them to spiral together and form more tightly bound systems.
What supports the Sun against gravitational collapse?
The atoms in the central regions move faster than those in outer regions and consequently they push outwards with more force, holding the Sun up. The force which they exert is described by the pressure; the internal pressure is higher than the external pressure, so the Sun is held up against gravitational collapse.
What shape is created when the nebula starts to rotate?
The Sun formed from material that condensed in the center of the spinning disk. The nebula also began to spin counterclockwise, as it conserved the angular momentum of the material drawn toward the center. This spinning made the material around the center of the condensing nebula flatten out into a disk-like shape.
What is the nebula stage?
The Nebula a defused, high density cloud of predominantly hydrogen and gas that slowly starts to collapse under the force of gravity . This pressure continues to increase as the nebula gets smaller and the temperature rises, leading to the next stage of a star’s life cycle. …
Which direction is the sun spinning?
The sun itself also rotates in a counterclockwise direction. The satellites of the planets also generally revolve and rotate in a counterclockwise direction.
Is the sun a stationary object?
First, it is not stationary in the solar system; it is actually in orbit around every body that is also in orbit around it, such as all the planets. Beyond this, the Sun is also moving around the centre of the Milky Way along with the entire solar system; one complete orbit will take about 230 million years.
Is the sun spinning?
Yes, the Sun absolutely spins. In fact, everything in the universe spins. And here’s another interesting Sun spin fact: the middle part of the Sun – its equator – spins more quickly than the top and bottom parts, which are called the Sun’s poles. It can do that because the Sun isn’t solid, it’s a ball of gas.
What keeps the sun spinning?
The Law of Conservation of Momentum applies to both linear and rotational motion. For rotational motion, the law is called the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. This law is why the sun keeps spinning. The angular momentum of an object equals its angular speed of rotation times its moment of inertia.