Twinkle, Twinkle: The Ultimate Stars Quiz

The sun is a star. It looks much brighter and larger than any other star, because it is much closer to Earth.

A light-minute is the distance that light travels through a vacuum in one minute. Since it takes light approximately eight minutes to travel the distance from the sun to Earth, the sun is considered to be 8 light-minutes away. A light-minute is equal to about 1,117,694 miles (1,798,754 kilometers).

Stars produce energy by way of nuclear fusion. Smaller atomic nuclei fuse together to produce larger nuclei, which not only release energy but also create different chemical elements. Most commonly, stars fuse hydrogen to produce helium, but the larger the star and the more its hydrogen is consumed, the more helium is fused into still heavier elements.

Stars of spectral type O are extremely large, but they burn out in just a few million years. By comparison, the sun, which is type G, has been shining for approximately 4.6 billion years and will be shining for billions of years to come.

Vega is a massive star that is about twice as large as our sun. It is only about 25 light-years from Earth, making it the fifth closest of all the bright stars. Its blue-white color is easily seen by the human eye.

All three are asterisms, but the Big Dipper is undoubtedly the most recognizable. It consists of seven bright stars that form the shape of a ladle. The Big Dipper is also useful for finding other stars.

A simple way to remember: stars twinkle, planets don't. Twinkling is the result of the atmosphere distorting light and continuous, small changes in the distortion. When viewing light from a faraway star, it will seem like a point in the sky. In contrast, planets are much closer to Earth and look like discs rather than pinpoints.

Galaxies range in size from dwarf galaxies containing around 100 million stars to mega-galaxies containing as many as 100 trillion stars. The Milky Way galaxy contains between 100 and 400 billion stars.

A constellation only appears as a two-dimensional pattern as viewed from Earth. But in actuality, the stars are not all located at the same distance. So in the case of Orion, the distance from Earth to the stars ranges from 243 to 1,360 light-years away.

A light-year is the distance that light travels through a vacuum in one year, equal to approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.3 trillion kilometers). A parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years. An orbit is the course that one object takes around another object.