There I was, lying on the grass, hands behind my head, thoughtlessly gazing into infinity. The dewy layer on the grass did not shine enough that winter night – it was moonless. The only sight that caught my attention that night was that of small dots of light, piercing through the nothingness of the bluish-black sky. “They are called Stars” – I said to myself. They did not speak, nor did they react to what I just said. All they did is – twinkle. And that brought a smile to my face. It was that night when my amazing fascination for these cosmic beings came to existence. I was six then.
As I grew up, so did my interest in the world beyond ours. As I learned more about the Universe, the first thought that struck me was – How infinitely big it is. The fact that I was a part of this limitless cosmos gave me a great sense of enormity – a strange sense of pride. There was a sense of excitement, when I thought about the places far away (really far away), which are still untouched, unexplored, unknown. And the embodiments of this fascinating idea of distance and obscurity were the Stars. These distant, innocent looking points of white light are actually, huge, intensely hot masses of gas and radioactive elements – home to the most explosive nuclear phenomena in the Universe - Fusion. ‘Outward appearances are surely deceptive’. Stars are majestic. Our own Sun is a middle-aged star. Millions of kilometers away from the earth, the Sun is the source of all heat and light on earth and all of the Solar System. This might give you an idea, of the amount of energy a star produces.
Like all creations of nature, stars also emerge from dust – space dust. Randomly scattered planetary dust and gases, are attracted towards each other under the action of Gravity, and under specific conditions and temperature, they form what we call a ‘protostar’ – the infant in Mother Nature’s womb. Along the course of billions of years, stars pass through different phases in their stellar lives (yellow dwarfs, red dwarfs, red giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars!) and exist for different lifetimes, depending on how massive they are. Just like humans, some stars just fade away into darkness, while others have spectacular deaths. When a sufficiently massive star uses up all its fuel for nuclear fusion, its constituent particles, start collapsing into each other under the effect of its own Gravity, resulting in the Supernova explosion – a burst of radiation that can outshine a galaxy, and produce as much energy as the Sun would produce in a lifetime. The remnant of a supernova is a Black Hole – an infinitely dense dark void in the cosmic fabric which attracts everything into itself, even light. Ironically, the same universal force of attraction is responsible for both the birth and the death of a star – Gravity.
But stars are much more than mysterious objects of Astronomy. We all want to ‘reach the stars’ or ‘be a star, a superstar!’. Stars have always been associated with success and recognition. They are thought of as the ultimate sign of glory. That is why stars hold immense importance in every culture, and are the symbol of the triumphant spirit of man.
For me, stars have a very personal meaning. They are a representation of all virtues and ideals I stand for. They relate to what I am and what I would want to be like in the future. Being as glorious and mighty as they are, stars appear to us as humble luminous specks across the night sky. They are physical embodiments of life energy, which they radiate through the entire Universe. But the virtue I define stars by is unending resolve. The light from the stars flickers and shimmers. It seems as if it fights a relentless battle against the darkness, and finally manages to pierce through, overcoming all odds.
Whenever I feel low, I look deep into the night sky and see the stars twinkling away shedding their light upon me. I have them, when I have no one else. What I feel at that moment is beyond expression.
‘The Night Sky so infinite,
Where the beauty of contrast abounds,
Stars are points of shimmering light,
Which cosmic darkness calmly surrounds.’
