Rita Rasimas, age 12, of Chula‑Vista, Cal f., for her question;

What are stars made of?

Our nearest star is the glorious sun, a radiant ball of blazing gases. The distant stars are, in the main, like our sun. Some are larger, some smaller, some hotter, some cooler. But all of them are atomic furnaces of seething gases.

It is hard to realize that the stars are made from the same elements that make our solid earth. However, a block of ice does not look much like a pail of water and the steam corning from a boiling pot looks vastly different from either ice or water. So it is with the elements of the earth and the sun.

On earth we find the element carbon frozen in its solid form. It is in sugar, wood coal, graphite and precious diamonds. The carbon present in the sun is exposed to far above its boiling point. The surface of the sun is 6,000 degrees Centigrade, the seething heart of the sun may be 20,000,00 degrees.  All solid carbon is turned to a gaseous state. On earth, a good deal of free oxygen is in the gaseous air. But much is also bound into solid rocks in combination with other elements. In the sun the temperature is too hot for such combinations of elements. Many of the elements found on earth, maybe all of them, are mixed together in the gaseous sun. This is also true of the stars, They too are made of the basic elements which make up our solid earth