Q:
Do stars spin?
A:
Yes.
You can see an animation of the sun rotating here. It rotates every 25 days or so. This rotation comes from angular momentum left-over from the gas cloud that collapsed to form the solar system. Actually, this initial gas cloud had too much angular momentum - the sun had to get rid of it by firing out huge jets of gas before settling into its present state.
Other stars rotate too - some of them are so fast that they are "oblate" - the centrifugal force pulls them out in the middle, so they're a bit fatter and a bit shorter than a slower rotating stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment