Fly Deep into the Space - Essay Example

Fly with me It was a dark cold day in December and the clocks were striking thirteen, every little girl and boy are fast asleep with their plush toys in their hand, dreaming subconsciously, except one boy Tiz stays awake to gaze upon the stars every day and dream consciously about flying with them. This time it was different for Tiz he wanted to stop dreaming and start living the dream. He grabbed his telescope off his bed and focused on his favorite star which is the Pistol Star, smiles and grabs his book about stars and looks closely in the index finally finds information about it. The book reads, “The Pistol star was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in the early 1990s and it is located approximately 25,000 light years from Earth it’s the direction of Sagittarius” This 4.8 light-year-wide view depicts the Luminous Blue Variable called the Pistol Star, the brightest known star in the Milky Way and the creator of the Pistol Nebula Standing on the perspective of the earth, the star-containing region is to the western edge of the Constellation Sagittarius, the Archer. Among the stars in the local group of the galaxies, the most luminous of them is the Pistol Star. Its diameter is bigger than that of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The star produces more than ten million times the light produced by the Sol (L=10^6.3). It releases as much energy as the sun does in a year within six seconds only. At the back of his mind, the boy was thinking of what could have happened if the star was located on the current position of the sun. It has more than one hundred and fifty solar-masses. The star is thought to have begun with around two hundred to two hundred and fifty solar-masses. It has been discarding much of its substance over time. The star is characterized as a luminous Blue Variable because of the extremely luminous nature of the star coupled with the possession of more than forty solar-masses. Other features resulting to the mention class is the variable spectra and its surrounding ejecta. If it were not for the interfering dust between it and the earth, the star would be visible from the earth with the naked eye. These features made him pose. He was carried away by thoughts of how exactly the cloud was like. He was engulfed by thoughts of the origin of the cloud of dust. The star is thought to be around one point seven and two point one million years old. It is expected to explode in supernovae within the next one to three million years. The creation of the Pistol Nebula was from an eruption in the outer layers of the star, which released up to ten solar masses of material in huge outpourings about four thousand to six thousand years ago. The star is still expected to lose more material, and finally exposing its bare hot core, scorching at one hundred thousand degrees. His mind at this time was hovering over what the star will be looking like after these years. He was in deliberation thinking of what he could do to stop the degradation of the star. He pictured himself on the star with other astronauts accessing the stars future. He falls into sleep, fancying of his presence on the star. He dreamt of a visit he had made with his family to the Kennedy Space Center. They had spent the whole day but did not even come close to exhausting the events in the center. With the base ticket that had been rewarded to him by his uncle, they were able to visit special areas in the centre. He smiled in his sleep on seeing the “rocket garden” that is displayed at the entrance to the centre. It is contained of rockets from NASA’s history. He had been pleased by the site of the Jupiter-Redstone rocket that he learnt had been used in the Mercury mission. Next to it was an Atlas rocket which was used in the Gemini program. He could not wait to meet the astronaut for the day’s highlight and his chance to ask the burning queries. They joined the many people who packed the auditorium in readiness to get the astronauts narration of their experiences. That day the astronaut of the day was the Brazilian’s first man to go to space, Marcos Pontes. In his sleep, he saw the charming face that had been. He was such an entertaining speaker and in his presentation, he showed the audience his videos and photos taken during his time in space. In the dream, he saw himself in the photos next to Marcos Pontes. There were expected questions from all the kids in the audience of what they could do to one day become astronauts. Marcos Pontes had responded to it by informing them that studying hard with persistence among the obstacles that will present themselves along the way. In his dream, the boy saw himself responding to the questions assuring them that focus is core as he had been on the audience side someday back in the 1980s and had heeded to the advice of working hard. He presented himself as true evidence that it is possible to reach ones dream. He led the audience to the bus tour. They drove past the Massive Vertical Assembly Building. Tiz showed them how the shuttle had been fixed to its rocket booster and an external fuel tank. He informed them that, they initially used it in the assemble of the enormous Saturn V rockets used to take astronauts to the moon in the Apollo program. That day he had visited, they had been informed that in order for them to take a close-up tour in the building they were required to buy a separate tour ticket, which his parents promised to acquire on their next tour. They got to see the crawler that had ferried the shuttle from the VAB to the Launch pad. They drove to an observation tower that gave them a panoramic view of the many launch pads. The 39-A launch pad that was built originally for the Apollo, impressed him. A change of the pad allowed to be used by the space shuttle. The climax of the tour for him was at the stop that had the Apollo showing an honest-to-goodness Saturn V rocket. This is the largest ever rocket to be built in history. In the same display, he saw a lunar ladder. This ladder was never used. It was in the same display that housed a lunar rover, command module and a touchable moon rock. Most of the historical artifacts from the lunar program were on display. They watched the Hubble Space telescope IMAX movie in the visitor’s center. The IMAX screen projected the stunning space views in a three dimensional screen hence being both amazing and inspiring. They got to have the real shuttle experience. A flight simulator recreated the sensation of the launch of a space shuttle. They were first shown an introductory video. Sitting in the shuttle, creates an imagination of one sitting in a module of a shuttle’s cargo bay. The simulator presents many shaking and rattling, inversions and rolls that a worthy a roller-coaster ride. The lacking aspect in the ride is the high G-forces that real astronauts experience. He woke up in the middle of the night and woke his parents to remind them of the return tour they had promised him. His father reminded him of the performance agreement that he had signed to. Back in school Tiz was obsessed with astronomy. In his compositions, he would always write about a visit to space and do it with a great passion and commitment that it interested his teachers. His essays were accompanied with fascinating facts about the space. At one point, the space telescope science institution – located on Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore, Maryland - introduced an essay writing competition whose final price was a visit space. It required an essay that captured facts about stars. Tiz knew this was his opportunity to have his dream fulfilled. His essay titled size of the stars read, ‘The forming of stars has happened for billions of years ago. Quite a good number of them have died, and still most still exist. We hope for the formation of many millions in the future. In the majority of a stars life, it is usually converting hydrogen to helium that gives a by-product of energy. The size of stars majorly depends on the stage of life it is at. At its childhood to middle age it is referred to as main sequence. It then graduates to the old age that is the last stage. Most of the stars change in size and appearance, becoming larger because of swelling. There are those that grow to be hyper giant stars. They vary in size and color just as the other stars with the main colors being Blue, Yellow and Red. They share characteristics like being very hot and largely luminous. The pressure contained in their cores is what affects the rate of helium production. The result is a shorter lifespan compared to smaller stars. They live their live intense only existing for millions of years but for the small dwarf ones exist for billions of years. They burn up a large amount of Hydrogen making them unstable. The star becomes violent, spilling its contents into space in great stellar winds. The quantity of material released from the stars is sometimes large such that its true shape is unseen from a hundred years of light. The term most massive star refers to something different from the term largest star. If the two stars were to be measured on a weighing balance, the most massive star would score the heaviest. The largest star would only score on measures of width in kilometers and miles. The most massive star is the R136a. It is seen as the biggest and brightest star. The weight of the cosmic kingpin is two hundred and sixty five solar masses. The interpretation of this is that the star has two hundred and sixty five times the amount of the ‘star stuff’ inside the sun. The discovery of the blue hyperactive giant star went way out of the accepted laws of science. The weight was twice as much as the weight that had been thought to be a possible weight for a star. It holds the record of being the heaviest and the most luminous star among the known stars. In terms of volume the largest known star in outer space is the red NML Cygni which is also known as V*V1489Cyg. It is found in the Constellation Cygnus the swan. The discoverer of it was by Martz, Leighton and Neugebauer in 1965. It is twenty to fifty times heavier than the sun. It is found about one point two billion kilometers (seven hundred and twenty million miles) away. Placing this star on the position of the sun on the Solar system would result to the engulfment of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and even Jupiter with its blazing surface threatening the Saturn planet. It’s closer rival in terms of diameter is the WHO G64 which falls short by seventy million kilometers. The red hyper giant can have a surface temperature of as low as three thousand Kelvins which is a value cooler than that of the counterpart the Blue and Yellow siblings. The hyper giant’s inevitable deaths are still masked in secrecy.’ This is the essay that was selected the most informative essay in the competition awarding him the tour to space. This was a dream come true for the boy who had all through thought he would fly with his star not knowing he was the star. Works Cited Green, D. and Simon B. (2009). Astronomy. New York: Kingfisher. Hoch D. et.al. (1990). The Years best mystery and suspense stories, New York: Walker Roberts, N. (2008). Hidden star. Waterville, Me.: Wheeler Pub. Read More