| COMPONENTS OF THE UNIVERSE When the Sun is warming the Earth and you look up into the blue sky,
what do you see? You might see a few clouds moving lazily across the
sky. But what would happen if the light of the Sun disappeared? You
would see stars and other components of the Universe. So where
are the stars during the day? We just can’t see them because the
light from the Sun hides them! What else is in
the Universe that we just can't see?
There are stars, galaxies,
globular clusters, and quasars that are part of the
Universe beyond our Solar System. There are different types of
individual stars representing different parts of their life. For
instance a planetary nebulae has a round shape with shells of
gas being thrown from stars that are ending their lives. A Herbig -Haro
object is a young star that is ejecting jets of material back into
space. Look at other objects beyond the Solar
System on the next page. Many of these objects are light years apart. A light
year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6
trillion miles.
But we also see objects that are
within our Solar System like planets, comets, asteroids
and meteorites.
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Iron meteorite taken from Anarctica.
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