In my long years as an astronomer, I have built my own astronomical lexicon (dictionary) with a great deal of effort that went into compiling it; and often wondered whether it was worth the effort and toil; and whether it would ever be printed and would be useful for anyone besides myself! At this point in time I have at long last found the audience who are willing to endure it!

Why not get on with it, and continue.

Dwarf stars: As you know, stars come in all sizes. There are some that are a million times bigger and more massive than our Sun, and there are those that are far smaller. Dwarf stars are those with their mass equal to, or even smaller than our Sun. Occasionally, much smaller.

Our sun is a medium-sized star and Jupiter nearly became a star, howsoever small. But if it had, it would have been among the smallest of them all; in certainty it would have been a Dwarf Star. They are low mass, low luminosity and long life stars. They burn their fuel very slowly and so live for perhaps trillions of years. That is mighty long — even for a star.

Since the universe is ‘only’ a few billion years old, it is hard to say with certainty how long would they actually live. Their life cycle is very interesting; they must be among the oldest members of the Galaxy.

Not all of them are visible because their light is too faint to be seen even though they may be at a distance where other stars are clearly visible. In mass, it is the exact opposite of black hole (B.H.). But in luminosity, whereas a B.H. is not visible at all, the Dwarf is very, very faint, visible through a small telescope but you should know where in the sky you should look.

The detailed stellar (sky, star) atlases indicate some of them. You may look it up and then proceed to locate these stars for your family and friends to show off!

Very big cool stars are called Red Giants. They consume their fuel rapidly and so they do not live long. There is another in this group, called White Dwarf. They are slightly longer lived. The least massive in this group have about one per cent of the mass of our Sun. These stars-to-be could not generate enough interior heat for fusion, and instead of stars they remain as planets; just as I opined about Jupiter, which very nearly became a star — but could not.

(Age of the) Earth: It is universally agreed that the Earth is a good 4.6 billion years old, a veteran of sorts! It had been established in the middle of 20th century that it was not as young as a few thousand years (as the priests had been suggesting, with no one having the courage to challenge them or their assertions).

The age of rock formation, the discovery of bones of dinosaurs and plants embedded into rocks proved that their age was much more than a few thousand, even a few million, neither one billion years or so. The gradual discovery of various metals, and minerals, particularly coal helped a great deal.

The age of the Earth appeared to be much longer. This assertion stunned the world. From the fossilised material they discovered that these things were altogether different from similar things found on Earth in their time. So they concluded that the world had been changing with the passage of time. Hence they came to associate millions and billions with the age of the Earth!

With the birth of universe, some 15-16 BYA, the fundamental forces of nature evolved. The galaxies and stars came into being. As did the Sun, Earth and life in that order. Life in the form of single-celled, bluish algae developed on planet Earth. It took about 500 MY for life to evolve into the lovely, colourful and a variety of forms as it is today. I mean the last 500 million years. Just think of the tiny worms in and out of ponds, snakes, leopards, tigers and bears in savannah, butterflies and birds in the air, fishes and crocodiles in water, (cockroaches and lizards in homes!), all the variety and colors of life all over the living, breathing, panting, blue green planet, itself turquoise in color. Lovely and graceful.

Imagine again the poison of snakes, needle-sharp fangs of the big cats, the long, gangling legs of Giraffe, the speed of cats; the lovely coat of polar bears and peacocks. That is the technology of nature. I have seen the same sparrows, crows, squirrels, verdant fields and roses all over the world as in my own lovely country. How they proliferated, and spread all over the globe is another story. So much for the age and the variety on the Earth!

Every single object in the skies is unique and strangely different from the other. This is true for all planets, all stars, all galaxies, all moons, all black holes, and what not, whether someone is watching them or not. There is beauty in the skies galore. There could be skies full of thick clouds, oceans of ice covered with miles of impenetrable rocky crust. Miles-deep coloured clouds with pressure that would crush the thickest rhinos, elephants or whales or big mountains. Man in the next century will experience them first hand. You never know!

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 6th, 2015