Will we have a run-in with Romulans next month?

Astronomy in general is a huge subject, as vast as the universe  it describes.  Even a subset star astronomy is huge.  There is more than a single person could study in a lifetime just in our own solar system.  Many people decide, then, to specialize, to focus their attention on the brightest objects that are often the first space objects that peak people's interest in astronomy-the stars.

The closest star we know is our sun, about 94,000,000 miles away from Earth.  Consider what the sun feels like on a hot day, imagine how hot it is up close.  The sun contains about 98% of the mass in our entire solar system.  That takes into account everything, the rocks, material, even the very large Jupiter and Saturn in all their moons.  If someone wanted to they could fit 105 Earths across the face of the sun, and over 1.3 million earths inside the Sun.  The nuclear reaction at the Sun's core comes from pressure 340 billion times that at sea level on earth and temperatures of over 27,000,000F.  Try that for a grill, George Foreman.

The sun is the most studied star we know.  It's about 250,000 times closer to Earth than the next known star.  But the interesting part of star astronomy is there's so much to work with beyond our own solar system.  From the Earth about 5,000 stars, every one in our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen with the naked eye.  With telescopes many more of the over 1 x 10^22 stars in the universe (that's an estimate) can be seen.  If you're counting that's a one followed by 22 zeros.  In fact, even a small telescope opens the eyes of an amateur star astronomy enthusiast to hundreds of thousands of stars.  Imagine that!  Professionals using larger telescopes can see other galaxies that contain over 200 billion stars. It would take many lifetimes just to count that high.

Scientists now know, through star astronomy, that many stars and planets orbiting them.   Planets cause stars to wobble, and that can be measured.  In 2008, for the first time, astronomers took visible light photographs of planets orbiting distant suns.  We are ever closer to finding intelligent life.

Will we have a run-in with Romulans next month?  Probably not.  But star astronomy and its study of our own Sun and all the stars in the universe will continue.  Maybe it also continues somewhere on another planet Maybe someone on one of those other planets is watching us!