We Are All Made of Stars: Amazing Photos From Journey to the Stars

Text by Caroline Hirsch

In the early universe, only 300 million years after the Big Bang, the first stars form from clouds of gas drawn together by the gravity of the mysterious substance called dark matter. See more photos below.

All images courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History

We are all made of stars...

It's important to be reminded of that every once in a while. The realization hits you with confounding awe: We are but specks in the universe, linked to everything on this planet, and, indeed, the stars above us!

As Whoopi Goldberg marvels in the narration to the Hayden Planetarium's new space show, Journey to the Stars, we have about a teaspoon-full of star matter from 13 billion years ago in our bodies today.

But more than just the narration, it is the visuals that will blow you away. Witness the birth and lifecycle of stars, like our sun, through spectacular images gathered from many earthbound and space telescopes; these images have been seamlessly combined with never-before-seen visualizations of physics-based simulations from NASA and space scientists around the world.

Catch the show at the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York City's American Museum of Natural History starting July 4th.

Almost five billion years ago, the Sun (circled) and its siblings were born in a cloud of gas and dust, forming a cluster of stars much like this one.

In the stellar nursery within the Orion Nebula, young stars are forming before our eyes from a giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust much as the Sun did almost five billion years ago. 

Traveling some five billion years into the future, viewers witness a startling sight: our own familiar yellow Sun has ballooned into a red giant nearly engulfing Earth.

Stars formed in huge numbers during the era of galaxy assembly, with the rate peaking at about ten billion years ago, when our Milky Way Galaxy first formed.

Comments

[Cheryl Esbenshade]

Am planning a short trip in Dec to NYC and decided to check info on this show. It truly is stunning. Will definitely see it.

[Val Turner]

Beautiful

[NY hotel]

Wow! What an amazing pictures! I've loved astronomy since I was a little child. I'll look for some nice hotel in the area on EasyClickTravel. This planetarium is the "must to see" place.