Becky Francis, age 10, of Sioux City, Iowa, for her question:

WHAT MAKES THE STARS SHINE?

Actually a star is an enormous blazing bonfire, big enough to gulp down at least a million earth size planets.

A blazing fire of this sort can be seen far and wide, shining forth in all directions. It is out there alone in the vast oceans of space  and its shining light may take many millions of years to reach us.  Our nearest star is the beaming sun. Compared with the faraway stars, it is very close to the earth and its shining beams take only about eight minutes to reach us. But its light comes from the same    sort of starry furnace.  Scientists tell us that it is a huge nuclear furnace that needs no oxygen, as ordinary fires do.  It burns and shines by remodeling atoms  and changing some of the material into blazing light.