title: M1 Garand

text: Twenty gas-operated .276 T3E2 Garands were made and competed with T1 Pedersen rifles in early 1931. The .276 Garand was the clear winner of these trials. The .30 caliber Garand was also tested, in the form of a single T1E1, but was withdrawn with a cracked bolt on October 9, 1931. A January 4, 1932 meeting recommended adoption of the .276 caliber and production of approximately 125 T3E2s. Meanwhile, Garand redesigned his bolt and his improved T1E2 rifle was retested. The day after the successful conclusion of this test, Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur personally disapproved any caliber change, in part because there were extensive existing stocks of .30 M1 ball ammunition. On February 25, 1932, Adjutant General John B. Shuman, speaking for the Secretary of War, ordered work on the rifles and ammunition in .276 caliber cease immediately and completely, and all resources be directed toward identification and correction of deficiencies in the Garand .30 caliber.


title: M1 Garand

text: On August 3, 1933, the T1E2 became the "semi-automatic rifle, caliber 30, M1". In May 1934, 75 M1s went to field trials; 50 went to infantry, 25 to cavalry units. Numerous problems were reported, forcing the rifle to be modified, yet again, before it could be recommended for service and cleared for procurement on November 7, 1935, then standardized January 9, 1936. The first production model was successfully proof-fired, function-fired, and fired for accuracy on July 21, 1937.


title: M1 Garand

text: Production difficulties delayed deliveries to the Army until September 1937. Machine production began at Springfield Armory that month at a rate of ten rifles per day, and reached an output of 100 per day within two years. Despite going into production status, design issues were not at an end. The barrel, gas cylinder, and front sight assembly were redesigned and entered production in early 1940. Existing "gas-trap" rifles were recalled and retrofitted, mirroring problems with the earlier M1903 Springfield rifle that also had to be recalled and reworked approximately three years into production and foreshadowing rework of the M16 rifle at a similar point in its development. Production of the Garand increased in 1940 despite these difficulties, reaching 600 a day by January 10, 1941, and the Army was fully equipped by the end of 1941. Following the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Winchester was awarded an "educational" production contract for 65,000 rifles, with deliveries beginning in 1943.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1 Garand was made in large numbers during World War II; approximately 5.4 million were made. They were used by every branch of the United States military. The rifle generally performed well. General George S. Patton called it "the greatest battle implement ever devised." The typical opponent of a US soldier during World War II was usually armed with a slower-firing bolt-action rifle (e.g. the Karabiner 98k for Germany and the Arisaka rifle for Japan). The impact of faster-firing infantry small arms in general soon stimulated both Allied and Axis forces to greatly increase their issue of semi- and fully automatic firearms then in production, as well as to develop new types of infantry firearms.


title: M1 Garand

text: Many M1s were repaired or rebuilt after World War II. While U.S. forces were still engaged in the Korean War, the Department of Defense decided more were needed. Springfield Armory ramped up production, but two new contracts were awarded. During 1953–56, M1s were produced by International Harvester and Harrington & Richardson in which International Harvester alone produced a total of 337,623 M1 Garands. A final, very small lot of M1s was produced by Springfield Armory in early 1957, using finished components already on hand. Beretta also produced Garands using Winchester tooling.


title: M1 Garand

text: In 1939, the British Army looked at the M1 as a possible replacement for its bolt-action Lee–Enfield No.1 Mk III., but decided against it as by January 1940 the Birmingham Small Arms Company was already preparing production of the Lee-Enfield Mk IV. However, surplus M1 rifles were provided as foreign aid to American allies, including South Korea, West Germany, Italy, Japan, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Iran, South Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. Most Garands shipped to allied nations were predominantly manufactured by International Harvester Corporation during the period of 1953–56, and second from Springfield Armory from all periods.


title: M1 Garand

text: Some Garands were still being used by the United States into the Vietnam War in 1963; despite the M14's official adoption in 1958, it was not until 1965 that the changeover from the M1 Garand was fully completed in the active-duty component of the Army (with the exception of the sniper variants, which were introduced in World War II and saw action in Korea and Vietnam). The Garand remained in service with the Army Reserve, Army National Guard, and the Navy into the early 1970s. The South Korean Army was using M1 Garands in the Vietnam War as late as 1966.


title: M1 Garand

text: Due to widespread United States military assistance as well their durability, M1 Garands have also been found in use in recent conflicts such as with the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.


title: M1 Garand

text: Some military drill teams still use the M1 rifle, including the U.S. Marine Corps Silent Drill Team, the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Honor Guard, the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, almost all Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and some Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) teams of all branches of the U.S. military. Additionally it's also used overseas by the drill team of His Majesty The King's Guard of Norway.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1 rifle is a .30 caliber, gas-operated, 8 shot clip-fed, semi-automatic rifle. It is long and it weighs about .


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1's safety catch is located at the front of the trigger guard. It is engaged when it is pressed rearward into the trigger guard, and disengaged when it is pushed forward and is protruding outside of the trigger guard.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1 Garand was designed for simple assembly and disassembly to facilitate field maintenance. It can be field stripped (broken down) without tools in just a few seconds.


title: M1 Garand

text: The rifle had an iron sight line consisting of rear receiver aperture sight protected by sturdy "ears" calibrated for in increments. The bullet drop compensation was set by turning the range knob to the appropriate range setting. The bullet drop compensation/range knob can be fine adjusted by setting the rear sight elevation pinion. The elevation pinion can be fine adjusted in approximately 1 MOA increments. The aperture sight was also able to correct for wind drift operated by turning a windage knob that moved the sight in approximately 1 MOA increments. The windage lines on the receiver to indicate the windage setting were 4 MOA apart. The front sighting element consisted of a wing guards protected front post.


title: M1 Garand

text: During World War II the M1 rifle's semiautomatic operation gave United States infantrymen a significant advantage in firepower and shot-to-shot recovery time over enemy infantrymen armed primarily with bolt-action rifles. The semi-automatic operation and reduced recoil allowed soldiers to fire 8 rounds as quickly as they could pull the trigger, without having to move their hands on the rifle and therefore disrupt their firing position and point of aim. The Garand's fire rate, in the hands of a trained soldier, averaged 40–50 accurate shots per minute at a range of 300 yards (270 m). "At ranges over 500 yards (460 m), a battlefield target is hard for the average rifleman to hit. Therefore, 500 yards (460 m) is considered the maximum effective range, even though the rifle is accurate at much greater ranges."


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1 rifle is fed by an "en bloc" clip which holds eight rounds of .30-06 Springfield ammunition. When the last cartridge is fired, the rifle ejects the clip and locks the bolt open. The M1 is then ready to reload. Once the clip is inserted, the bolt snaps forward on its own as soon as thumb pressure is released from the top round of the clip, chambering a round and leaving it ready to fire. Although it is not absolutely necessary, the preferred method is to place the back of the right hand against the operating rod handle and press the clip home with the right thumb; this releases the bolt, but the hand restrains the bolt from slamming closed on the operator's thumb (resulting in "Garand thumb", a bruise appearing on the thumbnail); the hand is then quickly withdrawn, the operating rod moves forward and the bolt closes with sufficient force to go fully to battery. Thus, after the clip has been pressed into position in the magazine, the operating rod handle should be released, allowing the bolt to snap forward under pressure from the operating rod spring. The operating rod handle may be smacked with the palm to ensure the bolt is closed.


title: M1 Garand

text: Contrary to widespread misconception, partially expended or full clips can be easily ejected from the rifle by means of the clip latch button. It is also possible to load single cartridges into a partially loaded clip while the clip is still in the magazine, but this requires both hands and a bit of practice. In reality, this procedure was rarely performed in combat, as the danger of getting debris inside the action along with the cartridges increased the chances of malfunction. Instead, it was much easier and quicker to simply manually eject the clip, and insert a fresh one, which is how the rifle was originally designed to be operated. Later, special clips holding two or five rounds became available on the civilian market, as well as a single-loading device which stays in the rifle when the bolt locks back.


title: M1 Garand

text: In battle, the manual of arms called for the rifle to be fired until empty, and then recharged quickly. Due to the well-developed logistical system of the U.S. military at the time, this consumption of ammunition was generally not critical, though this could change in the case of units that came under intense fire or were flanked or surrounded by enemy forces. The Garand's "en bloc" clip system proved particularly cumbersome when using the rifle to launch grenades, requiring removal of an often partially loaded clip of ball ammunition and replacement with a full clip of blank cartridges.


title: M1 Garand

text: By modern standards, the M1's feeding system is archaic, relying on clips to feed ammunition, and is the principal source of criticism of the rifle. Officials in Army Ordnance circles demanded a fixed, non-protruding magazine for the new service rifle. At the time, it was believed that a detachable magazine on a general-issue service rifle would be easily lost by U.S. soldiers (a criticism made of British soldiers and the Lee–Enfield dozens years previously), would render the weapon too susceptible to clogging from dirt and debris (a belief that proved unfounded with the adoption of the M1 Carbine), and that a protruding magazine would complicate existing manual-of-arms drills. As a result, inventor John Garand developed an "en bloc" clip system that allowed ammunition to be inserted from above, clip included, into the fixed magazine. While this design provided the requisite flush-mount magazine, the clip system increased the rifle's weight and complexity, and made only single loading ammunition possible without a clip.


title: M1 Garand

text: Ejection of an empty clip created a distinctive metallic "clanging" sound. In World War II, it was rumored that German and Japanese infantry were making use of this noise in combat to alert them to an empty M1 rifle in order to catch their American enemies with an unloaded rifle. It was reported that the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground began experiments with clips made of various plastics in order to soften the sound, though no improved clips were ever adopted. However, this claim regarding the risks of a clanging empty clip is questionable due to hearsay produced as fact by the only known source, the otherwise fairly reliable author Roy F. Dunlap in "Ordnance Went Up Front" in 1948. According to former German soldiers, the sound was inaudible during engagements and not particularly useful when heard, as other squad members might have been nearby ready to fire. Due to the often intense deafening noise of combat and gunfire it is highly unlikely any U.S. servicemen were killed as a result of the clang noise; however some soldiers still took the issue very seriously. Some U.S. veterans recalling combat in Europe are convinced that German soldiers did respond to the ejection clang, and would throw an empty clip down to simulate the sound so the enemy would expose themselves.


title: M1 Garand

text: Garand's original design for the M1 used a complicated gas system involving a special muzzle extension gas trap, later dropped in favor of a simpler drilled gas port. Because most of the older rifles were retrofitted, pre-1939 "gas-trap" M1s are very rare today and are prized collector's items. In both systems, expanding gases from a fired cartridge are diverted into the gas cylinder. Here, the gases meet a long-stroke piston attached to the operating rod, which is pushed rearward by the force of this high-pressure gas. Then, the operating rod engages a rotating bolt inside the receiver. The bolt is locked into the receiver via two locking lugs, which rotate, unlock, and initiate the ejection of the spent cartridge and the reloading cycle when the rifle is discharged. The operating rod (and subsequently the bolt) then returns to its original position.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1 Garand was one of the first self-loading rifles to use stainless steel for its gas tube, in an effort to prevent corrosion. As the stainless metal could not be parkerized, the gas tubes were given a stove-blackening that frequently wore off in use. Unless the gas tube could be quickly repainted, the resultant gleaming muzzle could make the M1 Garand and its user more visible to the enemy in combat.


title: M1 Garand

text: Several accessories were used with the Garand rifle. Several different styles of bayonets fit the rifle: the M1905, with a 16-inch (406 mm) blade; the M1 with a 10-inch (254 mm) blade (either made standard or shortened from existing M1905 bayonets); and the M5 bayonet with 6.75-inch (171 mm) blade.


title: M1 Garand

text: Also available was the M7 grenade launcher that could easily be attached to the end of the barrel. It could be sighted using the M15 sight, which was attached with screws to the left side of the stock, just forward of the trigger. A cleaning tool, oiler and grease containers could be stored in two cylindrical compartments in the buttstock for use in the field.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1907 two-piece leather rifle sling was the most common type of sling used with the weapon through World War II. In 1942, an olive drab canvas sling was introduced that gradually became more common. Another accessory was the "winter trigger", developed during the Korean War. It consisted of a small mechanism installed on the trigger guard, allowing the soldier to remotely pull the trigger by depressing a lever just behind the guard. This enabled the shooter to fire his weapon while using winter gloves, which could get "stuck" on the trigger guard or not allow for proper movement of the finger.


title: M1 Garand

text: Most variants of the Garand, save the sniper variants, never saw active duty. The sniper versions were modified to accept scope mounts, and two versions (the "M1C", formerly M1E7, and the "M1D", formerly M1E8) were produced, although not in significant quantities during World War II. The only difference between the two versions is the mounting system for the telescopic sight. In June 1944, the M1C was adopted as a standard sniper rifle by the U.S. Army to supplement the venerable M1903A4, but few saw combat; wartime production was 7,971 M1Cs.


title: M1 Garand

text: The procedure required to install the M1C-type mounts through drilling/tapping the hardened receiver reduced accuracy by warping the receiver. Improved methods to avoid reduction of accuracy were inefficient in terms of tooling and time. This resulted in the development of the M1D, which utilized a simpler, single-ring Springfield Armory mount attached to the barrel rather than the receiver. The M1C was first widely used during the Korean War. Korean War production was 4,796 M1Cs and 21,380 M1Ds; although few M1Ds were completed in time to see combat.


title: M1 Garand

text: The U.S. Marine Corps adopted the M1C as their official sniper rifle in 1951. This USMC 1952 sniper's rifle, or MC52, was an M1C with the commercial Stith Bear Cub scope manufactured by the Kollmorgen Optical Company under the military designation: telescopic sight - Model 4XD-USMC. The Kollmorgen scope with a slightly modified Griffin & Howe mount was designated MC-1. The MC52 was also too late to see extensive combat in Korea, but it remained in Marine Corps inventories until replaced by bolt-action rifles during the Vietnam War. The U.S. Navy has also used the Garand, rechambered for the 7.62×51mm NATO round.


title: M1 Garand

text: A detachable M2 conical flash hider, adopted January 25, 1945 slipped over the muzzle and was secured in place by the bayonet lug. A T37 flash hider was developed later. Flash hiders were of limited utility during low-light conditions around dawn and dusk, but were often removed as potentially detrimental to accuracy.


title: M1 Garand

text: The "Tanker" name was invented after the war as a marketing gimmick for commercial Garands built on welded demilled receivers. There are three 18-inch M1 Garands variants, the M1E5 and T26, which never saw service, and the PWB rifle, which saw very limited service in the Pacific. The M1E5 is equipped with a shorter 18-inch (457 mm) barrel and a folding buttstock. The T26 also uses an 18-inch (457 mm) barrel but retains the standard buttstock. The PWB rifle uses an 18-inch (457 mm) barrel also retains the standard buttstock and has a foregrip secured by M1903 barrel band.


title: M1 Garand

text: It was recognized that such an arm might be particularly valuable for paratroopers, as it was more powerful than the carbines and submachine guns currently in use. Preliminary testing revealed it had excessive recoil and muzzle blast, but it was recommended that it be developed further. The Infantry Board directed Col. Rene Studler to proceed with the project.


title: M1 Garand

text: The task was assigned to Springfield Armory, and John Garand began work in January 1944. The resultant experimental arm, designated as the "U.S. Carbine, Cal. 30, M1E5", was fitted with a specially made 18-inch barrel (not a shortened standard M1 rifle barrel) marked "1 SA 2-44" and a pantograph metal stock that folded underneath the rifle. The receiver was marked "U.S. Carbine/Cal. .30 M1E5/Springfield/Armory/1". It was designated as a carbine and not a rifle.


title: M1 Garand

text: Other than the folding stock, the basic M1 rifle was essentially unchanged with the exception of the short barrel, a correspondingly shortened operating rod (and spring) and the lack of a front handguard. The overall length was 37½ inches and it weighed approximately 8 lbs., 6 ozs.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1E5 "Garand carbine" was tested at Aberdeen Proving Ground in May 1944. It was determined that while accuracy at 300 yards was on par with the standard M1 rifle, recoil, muzzle blast and flash were excessive. It was recommended that a pistol grip be installed, which was done for subsequent testing.


title: M1 Garand

text: Photos of the M1E5 in stocks with and without the pistol grip exist, which were thought suggest there were two different models, but this is not the case. The folding stock had been repaired several times and it proved to be rather uncomfortable when firing. Work began on a modified folding stock, designated as the "T6E3", to improve the deficiencies found in the original pattern, but it was not fully developed.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1E5 suffered from the "compromise syndrome", as it required a trade-off between compactness and performance. It was indeed more compact than the standard Garand rifle, but the short barrel made it an unpleasant gun to fire—and the advantages were not judged to be sufficient to offset the disadvantages. Further development of the M1E5 was suspended as other projects at Springfield, such as the selective-fire T20 series, were deemed to have a higher priority. Only one example of the M1E5 was fabricated for testing, and the gun resides today in the Springfield Armory National Historic Site Museum.


title: M1 Garand

text: Despite the concept being shelved at Springfield Armory, the idea of a shortened M1 rifle was still viewed as potentially valuable for airborne and jungle combat use. Particularly in the Pacific Theater, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the M1 carbine's range, power and foliage-penetration ("brush-cutting") capability. The Ordnance Department was not responsive to these complaints coming in from the Pacific and maintained that the M1 rifle and M1 carbine each filled a specific niche.


title: M1 Garand

text: Nonetheless, by late 1944 the Pacific Warfare Board (PWB) decided to move forward with the development of a shortened M1 rifle. Colonel William Alexander, chief of the PWB, directed an Army ordnance unit of the 6th Army in the Philippines to fabricate 150 rifles in this configuration for testing. Since the previous M1E5 project was not widely disseminated, it is entirely possible that the PWB may not have been aware of Springfield Armory’s development of a similar rifle, and conceived the idea independently.


title: M1 Garand

text: Some of the shortened M1 rifles were field-tested in October 1944 on Noemfoor Island, New Guinea, by an ad hoc test committee, which included three platoon leaders of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) combat team. While the members of the test committee liked the concept of the short M1 rifle, it was determined that the muzzle blast was excessive and was compared to a flash bulb going off in the darkened jungle. The conclusion of the test report stated that the shortened rifle was "totally unsuitable for a combat weapon".


title: M1 Garand

text: Even while the shortened M1 rifles were being evaluated by the 503rd PIR, two of them were sent to the Ordnance Dept. in Washington, D.C., by special courier for evaluation. One of these rifles was then forwarded to Springfield Armory.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M1s shortened in the Philippines under the auspices of the PWB had been well-used prior to modification, and the conversion exhibited rather crude craftsmanship, including hand-cut splines on the barrel.


title: M1 Garand

text: Upon receipt of the PWB rifle, Springfield Armory’s model shop fabricated a very similar shortened M1 that was designated as the "T26". One of the more noticeable differences was that the shortened PWB rifle had a cut-down front handguard (secured by an M1903 rifle barrel band), while the T26 rifle was not fitted with a front handguard. It had been determined that the full-length stock was superior to the M1E5's folding stock, so the T26 used a standard M1 rifle stock.


title: M1 Garand

text: The PWB rifle, serial No. 2437139, and Springfield Armory's T26 were sent to Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) on July 26, 1945, for testing. The APG report related that a standard M1 rifle, serial No. 1,032,921, was the "control" rifle to which the shorter rifle was compared during the testing. The results mirrored those of the M1E5's previous testing. The test report found that the modified rifle's muzzle flash, blast, and recoil were all significantly higher than that of the standard rifle. Additionally, it was less reliable, leading to it being declared "totally unsuitable as a combat weapon". Nonetheless, in July 1945, 15,000 short M1 rifles were requested for use by airborne troops. The rifles were supposed to be produced within the next five months, but the procurement was canceled due to the Surrender of Japan in August 1945.


title: M1 Garand

text: Another variant that never saw duty was the T20E2. It was an experimental, gas-operated, selective fire rifle with a slightly longer receiver than the M1 and modified to accept 20-round Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) magazines. The rifle was machined and tapped on the left side of the receiver for a scope mount, and included the same hardware for mounting a grenade launcher as the M1. The bolt had a hold-open device on the rear receiver bridge, as well as a fire selector similar to the M14. Full automatic fire was achieved by a connector assembly which was actuated by the operating rod handle. This, in turn, actuated a sear release or trip which, with the trigger held to the rear, disengaged the sear from the hammer lugs immediately after the bolt was locked. In automatic firing, the cyclic rate of fire was 700 rpm. When the connector assembly was disengaged, the rifle could only be fired semi-automatically and functioned in a manner similar to the M1 rifle. The T20 had an overall length of inches, a barrel length of 24 inches, and weighed 9.61 lb without accessories and 12.5 lb with bipod and empty magazine. It was designated as limited procurement in May 1945. Due to the cessation of hostilities with Japan, the number for manufacture was reduced to 100. The project was terminated in March 1948.


title: M1 Garand

text: Demilitarized models are rendered permanently inoperable. Their barrels have been drilled out to destroy the rifling. A steel rod is then inserted into the barrel and welded at both ends. Sometimes, their barrels are also filled with molten lead or solder. Their gas ports or operating system are also welded closed. Their barrels are then welded to their receivers to prevent replacement. Their firing pin holes are welded closed on the bolt face. As a result, they cannot be loaded with, much less fire live ammunition. However, they may still be used for demonstration or instructional purposes.


title: M1 Garand

text: M1 Garands in Pakistan were found to be chambered in 7.92 × 57 mm due to a lack of .30-06 ammo in the country.


title: M1 Garand

text: The Type 4 Rifle, often referred to as the Type 5 Rifle (Japanese: 四式自動小銃 "Yon-shiki jidousyoujyuu"), was a Japanese experimental semi-automatic rifle. It was a copy of the American M1 Garand but with an integral 10-round magazine and chambered for the Japanese 7.7×58mm Arisaka cartridge. Where the Garand used an "en bloc" clip, the Type 4's integral magazine was charged with two 5-round stripper clips and the rifle also used Japanese style tangent sights. The Type 4 had been developed alongside several other experimental semi-automatic rifles. However, none of the rifles entered into service before the end of World War II, with only 250 being made and many others were never assembled. There were several problems with jamming and feed systems, which also delayed its testing.


title: M1 Garand

text: During the 1950s, Beretta produced Garands in Italy at the behest of NATO, by having the tooling used by Winchester during World War II shipped to them by the U.S. government. These rifles were designated "Model 1952" in Italy. Using this tooling, Beretta developed the BM59 series of rifles. The BM59 was essentially a rechambered 7.62×51mm NATO caliber M1 fitted with a removable 20-round magazine, folding bipod and a combined flash suppressor/rifle grenade launcher. The BM59 is capable of selective fire. These rifles would also be produced under license in Indonesia as the "SP-1" series.


title: M1 Garand

text: The M14 rifle, officially the United States Rifle, 7.62 mm, M14, is an American selective fire automatic rifle that fires 7.62×51mm NATO (.308 Winchester) ammunition. The M14 rifle is basically an improved select-fire M1 Garand with a 20-round magazine. The M14 rifle incorporated features of both the M1 rifle and the M1 Carbine, including the latter's short stroke piston design originally developed by Winchester Arms.


title: M1 Garand

text: Designed by L. James Sullivan and William B. Ruger, and produced by Sturm, Ruger & Co. the Mini-14 rifle employs an investment cast, heat-treated receiver and a version of the M1/M14 rifle locking mechanism. Although the Mini-14 looks like the M14, it utilizes a reduced-size operating system, a different gas system and is chambered for the smaller .223 cartridge.


title: M1 Garand

text: In 1982, years after the closure of the U.S. Springfield Armory, a commercial firm – Springfield Armory, Inc. – began production of the M1 Rifle using a cast, heat-treated receiver with serial numbers in the 7,000,000+ range, along with commercially produced barrels (marked Geneseo, IL) and G.I. military surplus parts.


title: M1 Garand

text: United States citizens meeting certain qualifications may purchase U.S. military surplus M1 rifles through the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP). The CMP is run by the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety (CPRPFS), a not-for-profit corporation chartered by the United States Congress in 1996 to instruct citizens in marksmanship and promote practice and safety in the use of firearms. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. From 1903 to 1996, the CMP was sponsored by the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM), a position first within the Department of War and later in the Department of the Army. The DCM was normally an active-duty Army colonel.


title: M1 Garand

text: In 2009, an effort by the South Korean government to export about 850,000 firearms to the United States, including 87,000 M1 rifles, for eventual sale to civilians, was initially approved by the Obama administration, but it later blocked the sale in March 2010. A State Department spokesman said the administration's decision was based on concerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands and be used for criminal activity. However, in January 2012, the U.S. and South Korea agreed on the sale of 87,000 M1 Garand rifles, and the South Korean government entered into discussion with U.S. civilian arms dealers. Korea has sold tens of thousands of M1 Garand rifles to the U.S. civilian market between 1986 and 1994. In 2018, the CMP reported they had received a shipment of more than 90,000 M1 Garand rifles from the Philippines and also stated plans to restore many of those rifles for civilian sale.


title: M1 Garand

text: In August 2013, the Obama administration banned future private importation of all U.S. made weapons, including the M1 Garand. This action did not preclude the return of surplus U.S. weapons, including M1 Garands, previously loaned by the U.S. to friendly nations, to the custody of the U.S. Government; in recent years, the CMP has received most of its surplus weapons through such returns from foreign countries. However, all civilian and military firearms imported into the U.S. after January 30, 2002, are required by federal law to have the name of the importer conspicuously stamped on the barrel, slide, or receiver of each weapon. This requirement significantly lowers a military weapon's value relative to those without the importation markings as they distract from its original state.


title: M1 Garand

text: Military surplus Garands and post-war copies made for the civilian market are popular among enthusiasts. In 2015, John F. Kennedy's personal M1 Garand was auctioned by Rock Island Auction Company and sold for $149,500. This rifle was acquired by Kennedy in 1959 from the Director of Civilian Marksmanship and has the serial number 6086970.


title: Angus Young

text: Angus McKinnon Young (born 31 March 1955) is an Australian musician, best known as the co-founder, lead guitarist, songwriter, and only remaining original member of the hard rock band AC/DC. He is known for his energetic performances, schoolboy-uniform stage outfits and his own version of Chuck Berry's duckwalk. Young was ranked 24th in "Rolling Stone"s 100 greatest guitarists of all-time list. In 2003, Young and the other members of AC/DC were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Angus Young

text: In the 1950s, Young's father, William Young (1911–1985), his mother, Margaret (1913–1988; maiden name also Young), and his elder seven siblings lived at 6 Skerryvore Road in the Cranhill district of Glasgow in Scotland. Cranhill was a tough, working-class suburb with high unemployment.


title: Angus Young

text: Prior to moving to Cranhill, William worked first as a wheel boy in a rope works and then as a machine/saw operator in an asbestos/cement business. In 1940 William joined the Royal Air Force serving in World War II as a flight engine mechanic. After the war William worked as a yard man for a builder and then as a postman.


title: Angus Young

text: Young spent the first seven years of his life in Cranhill. His siblings were Stephen Crawford (19331989), Margaret (1935–2019), John (born 1938), Alexander (1938–1997), William (born 1940), George (1946–2017) and Malcolm (1953–2017).


title: Angus Young

text: Music was part of family life. Stephen played the piano accordion and the piano, Young's sister Margaret was passionate about music, John played the guitar, Alexander was an accomplished singer, bass guitarist and saxophonist who in the early 1960s left for a career in music in Europe, and George and Malcolm eventually became founding members of the Easybeats and AC/DC respectively. Stephen was the father of Stevie Young who in later years took over from Malcolm in AC/DC.


title: Angus Young

text: Young himself took up the guitar at the age of five or six, receiving one lesson from Alexander, after which he was self-taught. Young also learned how to fight on Cranhill's tough streets, and, on one occasion was struck by a car.


title: Angus Young

text: Prompted by the worst winter on record in Scotland and TV advertisements offering assisted travel for families to immigrate to Australia, William, Margaret, George, Malcolm and Young flew from Scotland to Sydney, Australia, in late June 1963.


title: Angus Young

text: Also aboard were Young's brother Stephen and his family, sister Margaret Horsburgh and brother William. Young's brother John had migrated to Australia separately.


title: Angus Young

text: Initially staying at Villawood Migrant Hostel (a site later developed as Villawood Immigration Detention Centre) in Nissen huts, brother George met and became friends with another migrant, Harry Vanda, a relationship that grew into their professional careers in music.


title: Angus Young

text: Young's family moved into a semi-detached house at 4 Burleigh Street in the Sydney suburb of Burwood. Young attended Burwood Public School from 1960-1966 and in 1967, attended Ashfield Boys High School, dropping out at age 15. While at high school, Young enjoyed only the art classes. He practised the guitar in his bedroom after school.


title: Angus Young

text: After high school, Young worked at various jobs, including night shifts at a butcher shop. Then he became an apprentice printer. For one week, a soft porn magazine called "Ribald" moved into the print shop where Young worked. Young set some type for that magazine, but, despite some claims, was never its employee.


title: Angus Young

text: Young first started playing on a banjo, re-strung with six strings. Young's first guitar was a cheap acoustic model purchased second-hand by his mother. After high school, and with a pay packet, Young bought his first Gibson SG second-hand around 1970 from a music shop just down the street from his home: "I got out and got a Gibson SG that I played until it got wood rot because so much sweat and water got into it. The whole neck warped. I bought it second-hand; it was about a '67. It had a real thin neck, really slim, like a Custom neck. It was dark brown."


title: Angus Young

text: Both Young and Malcolm were in a band with George and his music partner Harry Vanda called Marcus Hook Roll Band. The project released an album in Australia called "Tales of Old Grand Daddy".


title: Angus Young

text: Prior to forming AC/DC, Angus Young played in a local group called Kantuckee. Kantuckee's line-up included Bob McGlynn (vocals), Angus Young (guitar), Jon Stevens (bass) and Trevor James (drums). The band split and was later called Tantrum with the following line up: Mark Sneddon (vocals-guitar), Angus Young (guitar), Jon Stevens (bass) and Trevor James (drums).


title: Angus Young

text: Young was 18 when he and Malcolm formed AC/DC in 1973. Young was on lead guitar, Malcolm on rhythm guitar, Colin Burgess on drums, Larry Van Kriedt on bass guitar and Dave Evans on vocals. The band had a recording contract with Albert Productions; it had also produced the work of the Easybeats.


title: Angus Young

text: "Can I Sit Next To You Girl", the band's first single, was later re-recorded with Bon Scott as their vocalist. They decided upon the name AC/DC, suggested by their sister Margaret, who saw the letters "AC/DC" on the back of her sewing machine.


title: Angus Young

text: Young tried a number of stage costumes, such as Spider-Man, Zorro, a gorilla, and a parody of Superman named Super-Ang, before settling on his signature schoolboy look at the suggestion of his sister. To match this image the press and public were told that Young was born in 1959, not 1955. The original uniform was created by his sister Margaret and when it fell apart from wear and tear, he used his uniform from Ashfield Boys High School in Sydney.


title: Angus Young

text: AC/DC released their debut album, "High Voltage", exclusively in Australia on 17 February 1975, along with a single "Baby, Please Don't Go" / "Love Song". Over the next three years AC/DC cemented themselves as a popular hard rock act, especially in Australia, with the follow-up albums "T.N.T.", "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Let There Be Rock" and "Powerage". All their albums until this point were produced by Young's brother George in partnership with Harry Vanda. Their 1979 studio album, "Highway to Hell", became their best-selling at the time and launched them to new heights of fame.


title: Angus Young

text: Months after this, Scott died from alcohol poisoning. Questions were raised as to whether the band could continue without him. Young and his other bandmates soon decided they should finish the work they had begun for their new album, so they recruited ex-Geordie singer Brian Johnson to replace Scott. Five months later, "Back in Black" was released as a tribute to Scott. It quickly became a huge success, far outselling any of their previous albums, and going on to reach 22x multi-platinum in the US alone, and selling 50 million copies, the second highest-selling album worldwide, behind only Michael Jackson's "Thriller". AC/DC's next album, "For Those About to Rock We Salute You", cemented their position as the most popular hard rock act of the time.


title: Angus Young

text: AC/DC's popularity declined with their next three albums, "Flick of the Switch", "Fly on the Wall" and "Blow Up Your Video". AC/DC looked as though they had reached their peak early in the 1980s and by the end of the decade were in decline. Malcolm Young missed the majority of the band's 1988 Blow Up Your Video World Tour to address his drinking problem. He eventually became sober and returned to the band. During his absence he was replaced by his nephew, Stevie Young.


title: Angus Young

text: The band's 1990 studio album, "The Razors Edge", brought them back into the spotlight, reaching 5x multi-platinum in the US alone and selling between 10 and 12 million copies worldwide. Over the next 10 years AC/DC released two other studio albums, "Ballbreaker" and "Stiff Upper Lip", which confirmed their renewed popularity and success. After a lengthy eight-year hiatus, AC/DC returned with a new studio album, "Black Ice", in 2008. "Black Ice" debuted at number 1 in 29 countries and was certified multi-platinum in 14 of those, becoming one of their most successful albums worldwide, and was followed by a hugely successful world tour. In 2010, AC/DC released an album of songs used for the "Iron Man 2" soundtrack they had put together; this reached number one in many countries around the world, including the UK, and number four in the US. Malcolm Young confirmed in 2011 that AC/DC were working on a 16th studio album.


title: Angus Young

text: In April 2014 Malcolm was forced to leave the band due to ill health, leaving Young the sole continuous founding member left in the band. In May it was revealed that Stevie Young, Malcolm and Young's nephew, would stand in for his uncle to record AC/DC's latest record. In September Malcolm officially retired and Stevie was made AC/DC's official full-time rhythm guitarist. AC/DC released "Rock or Bust" in the fall of 2014. In March 2016, after the departure of both Malcolm Young and drummer Phil Rudd, AC/DC was set back with yet another departure; long time lead singer Brian Johnson was ordered by doctors to stop performing or face total hearing loss. Young, determined to finish what the band started, recruited Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose to stand in for Johnson for the remainder of the Rock or Bust World Tour. On 30 September 2020, the band's official Twitter account announced the pending release of a new album, "Power Up", with the lineup of Angus Young, Stevie Young, Brian Johnson, Cliff Williams and Phil Rudd.


title: Angus Young

text: In 2003, AC/DC were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame and the following year they were ranked number 72 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the "100 greatest artists of all time." VH1 ranked them number 23 on their list of the "100 greatest artists of all time" and number 4 in their list of the "100 greatest artists of hard rock."


title: Angus Young

text: Young is married to a Dutch woman named Ellen van Lochem. They own homes in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands.


title: Angus Young

text: On 24 August 2006, Young received "Kerrang!" magazine's Legend Award from the editor, Paul Brannigan, who called AC/DC "one of the most important and influential rock bands in history". On 16 May 2012, he was named the "Best Australian Guitarist of All Time" in a poll conducted by "Australian Guitar Magazine".


title: Angus Young

text: Young has used Gibson SGs in various forms (his original, and the basis for his current signature model, was a 1969 - 1971 SG Standard) throughout his career. He also used a modified version of the SG called the Jaydee SG, which was made custom for Young by Jaydee guitars. At least two of his SGs (whether modified Gibson product or ground-up construction) circa 1977 and the Paris "" tapings featured on-board wireless going to his amplifiers, the circuitry installed in a cavity routed into the back of the body. This practice was discontinued due to the potential for electrical shorts due to sweat, and at least one of these guitars would be repaired and used for the "Rock or Bust" tour.<ref name="Rig Rundown:AC/DC"></ref> The Jaydee SG featured signature lightning bolt inlays on the fretboard. Gibson made a custom SG for Young with lightning bolt inlays to replace the Jaydee SG. Young's '69 - '71 SG has T Top humbucking pick-ups. Another 1964 SG that he used on the recording of "Ballbreaker", has patent # pick-ups. All of these are vintage-output Alnico II or V pick-ups with matched coils typically reading 7.5k - 7.8k DCR. Beginning in 2009, Young started fitting Seymour Duncan humbuckers to all of his touring guitars. He uses Ernie Ball Super Slinky guitar strings (.009-.042) and Fender "Extra Heavy" picks.


title: Angus Young

text: Young and Gibson Guitar Corporation have collaborated to make the Angus Young SG. It features a pick-up designed by Young himself (the Angus Young Signature Humbucker) in the bridge position, and a '57 Classic Humbucker in the neck. The neck has "lightning bolt" inlays.


title: Angus Young

text: Young mainly uses Marshall 1959 100 watt Super Lead Plexi heads and model 1960 AX and BX 4x12 cabinets with Celestion G12-65 speakers. Later amplifiers included Marshall JMP 2203 and most recently, Wizard Amplifiers. Early wireless systems, the Schaffer-Vega Diversity System that he would begin using in 1977, was also used as a compressor and a booster in his signal to "fatten up" his tone. Ever since adding it to his rig, it was used on several albums in the studio for chosen rhythm guitar tracks and all lead guitar tracks. Beginning with "Rock or Bust", due to the discontinuation of the Schaffer system, Young began using a replica of the unit's preamp with a commercial wireless unit from Shure.


title: Angus Young

text: Young has stated that he first began playing guitar when he was "little, teeny. I would sort of dabble around five or six years old. That's when I started hearing Little Richard."


title: Angus Young

text: In an interview with "The Guitar Show", Young noted his influences include his brother Malcolm Young, Chuck Berry, Freddie King and Muddy Waters, while playing licks relating to Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, John Lee Hooker and the Kinks' "You Really Got Me".


title: Angus Young

text: Young has indicated that he was also influenced by Keith Richards, as well as Chuck Berry's performing style, including his banter with audiences and duck walk. When the band covered Chuck Berry songs in their early years, audiences would recognise the song, while noting their renditions were very different from the source material.


title: Angus Young

text: Young's playing style is influenced by straight blues playing in both the minor and major pentatonic twelve bar blues-type progressions. In AC/DC's earlier recordings, power chords can be heard in songs such as "T.N.T." and "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". He also utilises touches of Scottish folk in his playing, and pull-off arpeggios (pull-offs played one-handed) are a popular trick, appearing in songs such as "Who Made Who", "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Sin City", and live renditions of "Let There Be Rock". In 1976, the band recorded an instrumental arrangement of the Scottish traditional song "Loch Lomond", retitled "Fling Thing", which has appeared in their stage act over the years. The title refers to the Highland Fling. Young occasionally provides backing vocals along with Malcolm on songs such as "T.N.T." and "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap".


title: Angus Young

text: A common criticism of AC/DC is that their songs are excessively simple and formulaic. In reply, Young stated in an interview with the "Atlanta Gazette" in 1979: "It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticised for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is."


title: Angus Young

text: Young is famous for his wild onstage antics, such as intense jumps and running back and forth across the stage. Once, he would clamber onto Bon Scott's or Brian Johnson's shoulders during concerts and they would make their way through the audience with smoke streaming from a satchel on Young's back, while he played an extended improvised guitar solo, usually during the song "Rocker" with Scott or "Let There Be Rock" with Johnson. He frequently does his own version of Chuck Berry's duck walk, as well as a "spasm" during which he throws himself to the ground, kicking, shaking and spinning in circles while playing the guitar. In earlier years he might remove his jacket and shirt mid-song as a form of 'striptease' to the confused bemusement of the crowd.


title: Angus Young

text: Young was advised by older brother George that, if he ever tripped over his guitar cable, to keep playing and make it look like part of the act. Young also included a sort of striptease as part of a mid-show ritual, during which he slowly took off his schoolboy outfit, running across the stage to elicit cheers from the audience, culminating in a "mooning" gesture to expose his underwear, generally chosen with the colours of the local flag or occasionally offering a brief glimpse of his bare buttocks. He would then grab his guitar and play the remainder of the show topless. According to AC/DC video director David Mallet, although Young performs many of his trademark feats sometimes from a series of platforms, risers and ramps, he suffers from a fear of heights; this was discovered when Mallet chose to have Young lowered from a second story balcony onto a stage floor by wires for the video for "Who Made Who".


title: Angus Young

text: The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), "honouring composers and songwriters". They commenced in 1982.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The fifth season of the AMC television series "Better Call Saul" premiered on February 23, 2020, in the United States, and concluded on April 20, 2020. The ten-episode season was broadcast on Mondays at 9:00pm (Eastern) in the United States, except for the premiere which aired on a Sunday. Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Rhea Seehorn, Patrick Fabian, Michael Mando, and Giancarlo Esposito reprise their roles from previous seasons and are joined by Tony Dalton, promoted to the main cast from his recurring role in the previous season. "Better Call Saul" is a spin-off prequel of "Breaking Bad" and was also created by Vince Gilligan; co-creator Peter Gould also worked on the series.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The fifth season picks up where the fourth left off, also taking place in 2004, four years before Jimmy McGill (Odenkirk) meets Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). The season shows the further evolution of Jimmy into the titular character, criminal defense lawyer "Saul Goodman", after regaining his law license, while fully rejecting the goodwill that Howard Hamlin (Fabian) extends to him in the wake of his brother Chuck's death. Kim Wexler (Seehorn) is dismayed by Jimmy's secretive and sporadic nature as well as her own willingness to go along with Jimmy's morally-ambiguous motives to move ahead in her casework. Lalo Salamanca's (Dalton) presence in Albuquerque disrupts Gus Fring's (Esposito) legitimate restaurant business and his reputation with the Juárez Cartel. Both Nacho Varga (Mando), fearing for his father's safety, and Mike Ehrmantraut (Banks), who is struggling to cope with his killing of Werner Ziegler, are caught between Gus and Lalo's conflict, eventually drawing Jimmy and Kim in.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The fifth season received universal acclaim from critics, particularly for its performances and heightened tension compared to earlier seasons, and four nominations at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, including for Outstanding Drama Series.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: On July 28, 2018, AMC renewed "Better Call Saul" for a fifth season, just prior to the airing of the fourth season. At the time of renewal, the number of episodes had yet to be specified, and even after the conclusion of the fourth season in October 2018, series co-creator Peter Gould said they were still in discussions with Sony Pictures Television for how long the fifth season would be, given that "Better Call Saul" had a finite amount of content. In November 2019, AMC confirmed that the fifth season would have ten episodes and would debut on February 23, 2020. On what to expect in the fifth season, Gould said that Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman's first move is "to try to leverage all the contacts he has in the world of selling drop phones." He also posed a question about Saul's reputation "as not just a criminal lawyer but a lawyer?".


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: Main cast members Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Rhea Seehorn, Patrick Fabian, Michael Mando, and Giancarlo Esposito return from previous seasons as Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman, Mike Ehrmantraut, Kim Wexler, Howard Hamlin, Nacho Varga, and Gus Fring, respectively. Tony Dalton, who recurred in season four as Lalo Salamanca, was promoted to the main cast for the fifth season.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: In January 2020, it was announced that "Breaking Bad" actors Dean Norris and Steven Michael Quezada would reprise their roles as Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez, along with actor Robert Forster who appeared posthumously as Ed Galbraith. The first episode of the season was dedicated to Forster. Bill Burr was set to return as Patrick Kuby in "Dedicado a Max", but scheduling fell through due to him needing to attend to a personal matter.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: Filming for the fifth season began on April 10, 2019, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and ended in September 2019.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: In the first scene of the season, Jimmy hides his real identity under his Gene Takavic alias while working at a Cinnabon in a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska. The Cinnabon scenes in "Better Call Saul" are set in Omaha, but are filmed at the Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: Series co-creator Vince Gilligan, who is also the creator of "Breaking Bad", said that the episode "Bagman" was the most "challenging" episode he has had to direct so far.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: In the United States, the season debuted with a two-night premiere on Sunday, February 23, 2020, and Monday, February 24, where it returned to its regular timeslot. In the weeks prior to the premiere, AMC had aired a "Breaking Bad" marathon leading into the AMC premiere showing of "" as lead-in to "Better Call Saul"s fifth season. Regarding the decision to air the fifth season nearly a year and a half after the fourth, Sarah Barnett, the president of the entertainment networks group at AMC Networks, said the long hiatus was "driven by talent needs, which we would not override if it would result in a worse show".


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: In certain international markets, like previous seasons, the fifth season was released on Netflix with episodes available the day after the episodes were broadcast on AMC.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The fifth season of "Better Call Saul" received universal acclaim from television critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 99% based on 184 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Grounded by Bob Odenkirk's endlessly nuanced, lived-in performance, "Better Call Saul"s fifth season is a darkly funny, vividly realized master class in tragedy." On Metacritic, the season has a score of 92 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: Kelly Connolly of "TV Guide" gave it 4.5/5 stars and wrote that "Better Call Saul" is better than other prequels, saying that the series "understands that the tragedy of fate is baked into the story." Writing for "Collider", Adam Chitwood gave it a perfect 5/5 star review, stating that the series might have become even better than "Breaking Bad", and describing its execution as "unparalleled by anything on television right now". Daniel D'Addario of "Variety" gave the first few episodes a positive review, saying ""Better Call Saul", in the early going of its fifth and penultimate season, remains the picture of white-knuckled but real restraint." Jen Chaney of "Vulture" said that Kim's development into a similar character as Jimmy made viewing the fifth season a more "nerve-wracking experience than usual, in the best, albeit still anxiety-provoking way."


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The final few episodes of the season were highlighted by Alison Herman from "The Ringer", as she mentioned that they finally had the two stories of "Better Call Saul", Jimmy's story involving legal work, and Mike's story involving the drug cartel, fully intersect after several seasons to a great effect. The episode "Bagman" received universal acclaim from critics and audiences, with some considering it to be the series' best episode. The following episode "Bad Choice Road" received similar acclaim.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: Rhea Seehorn's performance as Kim during the fifth season was seen by some critics as the stand-out performance of the season. Both from "Rolling Stone", Alan Sepinwall described her as the "MVP of "Better Call Saul"", and Brian Tallerico referred to Seehorn's work as "one of the best performances on any show in the last decade". Liz Shannon Miller of "Collider" wrote in regards to her Emmy snub, "Seehorn in particular hurts after turning in career-best work; Kim Wexler's journey in Season 5 was a heartbreaking, even chilling experience". The final scene from "Bad Choice Road" in which Kim stands up to Lalo for Jimmy was highlighted by CNN's Brian Lowry, saying that it has "really been Seehorn's year, crystallizing what has drawn Kim to Jimmy" and that is showed the "character's strength". "TVLine" named Seehorn their "Performer of the Week" for her performance in "Bad Choice Road", particularity the final scene. They wrote that Seehorn was "delivering one of the best performances on TV" and "is the best thing that ever happened to "Better Call Saul"."


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: In response to the Emmy nominations, several critics felt that Odenkirk (who had been nominated for each previous season) and Seehorn were significant snubs.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: The fifth season was released on Blu-ray and DVD in region 1 on November 24, 2020. The set contains all 10 episodes, plus cast and crew audio commentaries on every episode, deleted scenes, and various behind-the-scenes featurettes.


title: Better Call Saul (season 5)

text: AMC released ten mini-episodes of "Ethics Training with Kim Wexler" alongside the fifth season of "Better Call Saul", which were presented on both YouTube and AMC's social media sites. It follows similar series "Los Pollos Hermanos Employee Training w/ Gus Fring" for season three and "Madrigal Electromotive Security Training" presented by Mike Ehrmantraut for the fourth season. The ethics training videos are presented as continuing education videos mixing live-action segments of Kim with Jimmy filming her behind the scenes along with animated segments, and are a product of "Saul Goodman Productions". The animated segments include nods to both "Better Call Saul" and "Breaking Bad". The web series won the award for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series at the 72nd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.


title: Star

text: A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye, all within the Milky Way galaxy.


title: Star

text: A star's life begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Its total mass is the main factor determining its evolution and eventual fate. A star shines for most of its active life due to the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core. This process releases energy that traverses the star's interior and radiates into outer space. At the end of a star's lifetime, its core becomes a stellar remnant: a white dwarf, a neutron star, or—if it is sufficiently massive—a black hole.


title: Star

text: Stellar nucleosynthesis in stars or their remnants creates almost all naturally occurring chemical elements heavier than lithium. Stellar mass loss or supernova explosions return chemically enriched material to the interstellar medium. These elements are then recycled into new stars. Astronomers can determine stellar properties—including mass, age, metallicity (chemical composition), variability, distance, and motion through space—by carrying out observations of a star's apparent brightness, spectrum, and changes in its position in the sky over time.


title: Star

text: Stars can form orbital systems with other astronomical objects, as in the case of planetary systems and star systems with two or more stars. When two such stars have a relatively close orbit, their gravitational interaction can significantly impact their evolution. Stars can form part of a much larger gravitationally bound structure, such as a star cluster or a galaxy.


title: Star

text: The word "star" ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root "h₂stḗr" also meaning star, but further analyzable as h₂eh₁s- ("to burn", also the source of the word "ash") + -tēr (agentive suffix). Compare Latin stella, Greek aster, German Stern. Some scholars believe the word is a borrowing from Akkadian "istar" (venus), however some doubt that suggestion. Star is cognate (shares the same root) with the following words: asterisk, asteroid, astral, constellation, Esther.


title: Star

text: Historically, stars have been important to civilizations throughout the world. They have been part of religious practices, used for celestial navigation and orientation, to mark the passage of seasons, and to define calendars.


title: Star

text: Early astronomers recognized a difference between "fixed stars", whose position on the celestial sphere does not change, and "wandering stars" (planets), which move noticeably relative to the fixed stars over days or weeks. Many ancient astronomers believed that the stars were permanently affixed to a heavenly sphere and that they were immutable. By convention, astronomers grouped prominent stars into asterisms and constellations and used them to track the motions of the planets and the inferred position of the Sun. The motion of the Sun against the background stars (and the horizon) was used to create calendars, which could be used to regulate agricultural practices. The Gregorian calendar, currently used nearly everywhere in the world, is a solar calendar based on the angle of the Earth's rotational axis relative to its local star, the Sun.


title: Star

text: The oldest accurately dated star chart was the result of ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC. The earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period (c. 1531 BC–1155 BC).


title: Star

text: The first star catalogue in Greek astronomy was created by Aristillus in approximately 300 BC, with the help of Timocharis. The star catalog of Hipparchus (2nd century BC) included 1,020 stars, and was used to assemble Ptolemy's star catalogue. Hipparchus is known for the discovery of the first recorded "nova" (new star). Many of the constellations and star names in use today derive from Greek astronomy.


title: Star

text: In spite of the apparent immutability of the heavens, Chinese astronomers were aware that new stars could appear. In 185 AD, they were the first to observe and write about a supernova, now known as SN 185. The brightest stellar event in recorded history was the SN 1006 supernova, which was observed in 1006 and written about by the Egyptian astronomer Ali ibn Ridwan and several Chinese astronomers. The SN 1054 supernova, which gave birth to the Crab Nebula, was also observed by Chinese and Islamic astronomers.


title: Star

text: Medieval Islamic astronomers gave Arabic names to many stars that are still used today and they invented numerous astronomical instruments that could compute the positions of the stars. They built the first large observatory research institutes, mainly for the purpose of producing "Zij" star catalogues. Among these, the "Book of Fixed Stars" (964) was written by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, who observed a number of stars, star clusters (including the Omicron Velorum and Brocchi's Clusters) and galaxies (including the Andromeda Galaxy). According to A. Zahoor, in the 11th century, the Persian polymath scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni described the Milky Way galaxy as a multitude of fragments having the properties of nebulous stars, and gave the latitudes of various stars during a lunar eclipse in 1019.


title: Star

text: According to Josep Puig, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars that almost touched one another and appeared to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction from sublunary material, citing his observation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars on 500 AH (1106/1107 AD) as evidence.


title: Star

text: Early European astronomers such as Tycho Brahe identified new stars in the night sky (later termed "novae"), suggesting that the heavens were not immutable. In 1584, Giordano Bruno suggested that the stars were like the Sun, and may have other planets, possibly even Earth-like, in orbit around them, an idea that had been suggested earlier by the ancient Greek philosophers, Democritus and Epicurus, and by medieval Islamic cosmologists such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. By the following century, the idea of the stars being the same as the Sun was reaching a consensus among astronomers. To explain why these stars exerted no net gravitational pull on the Solar System, Isaac Newton suggested that the stars were equally distributed in every direction, an idea prompted by the theologian Richard Bentley.


title: Star

text: The Italian astronomer Geminiano Montanari recorded observing variations in luminosity of the star Algol in 1667. Edmond Halley published the first measurements of the proper motion of a pair of nearby "fixed" stars, demonstrating that they had changed positions since the time of the ancient Greek astronomers Ptolemy and Hipparchus.


title: Star

text: William Herschel was the first astronomer to attempt to determine the distribution of stars in the sky. During the 1780s, he established a series of gauges in 600 directions and counted the stars observed along each line of sight. From this he deduced that the number of stars steadily increased toward one side of the sky, in the direction of the Milky Way core. His son John Herschel repeated this study in the southern hemisphere and found a corresponding increase in the same direction. In addition to his other accomplishments, William Herschel is noted for his discovery that some stars do not merely lie along the same line of sight, but are physical companions that form binary star systems.


title: Star

text: The science of stellar spectroscopy was pioneered by Joseph von Fraunhofer and Angelo Secchi. By comparing the spectra of stars such as Sirius to the Sun, they found differences in the strength and number of their absorption lines—the dark lines in stellar spectra caused by the atmosphere's absorption of specific frequencies. In 1865, Secchi began classifying stars into spectral types. The modern version of the stellar classification scheme was developed by Annie J. Cannon during the early 1900s.


title: Star

text: The first direct measurement of the distance to a star (61 Cygni at 11.4 light-years) was made in 1838 by Friedrich Bessel using the parallax technique. Parallax measurements demonstrated the vast separation of the stars in the heavens. Observation of double stars gained increasing importance during the 19th century. In 1834, Friedrich Bessel observed changes in the proper motion of the star Sirius and inferred a hidden companion. Edward Pickering discovered the first spectroscopic binary in 1899 when he observed the periodic splitting of the spectral lines of the star Mizar in a 104-day period. Detailed observations of many binary star systems were collected by astronomers such as Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve and S. W. Burnham, allowing the masses of stars to be determined from computation of orbital elements. The first solution to the problem of deriving an orbit of binary stars from telescope observations was made by Felix Savary in 1827.


title: Star

text: The twentieth century saw increasingly rapid advances in the scientific study of stars. The photograph became a valuable astronomical tool. Karl Schwarzschild discovered that the color of a star and, hence, its temperature, could be determined by comparing the visual magnitude against the photographic magnitude. The development of the photoelectric photometer allowed precise measurements of magnitude at multiple wavelength intervals. In 1921 Albert A. Michelson made the first measurements of a stellar diameter using an interferometer on the Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory.


title: Star

text: Important theoretical work on the physical structure of stars occurred during the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1913, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram was developed, propelling the astrophysical study of stars. Successful models were developed to explain the interiors of stars and stellar evolution. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin first proposed that stars were made primarily of hydrogen and helium in her 1925 PhD thesis. The spectra of stars were further understood through advances in quantum physics. This allowed the chemical composition of the stellar atmosphere to be determined.


title: Star

text: With the exception of rare events such as supernovae and supernova imposters, individual stars have primarily been observed in the Local Group, and especially in the visible part of the Milky Way (as demonstrated by the detailed star catalogues available for the Milky Way galaxy) and its satellites. Individual stars such as Cepheid variables have been observed in the M87 and M100 galaxies of the Virgo Cluster, as well as luminous stars in some other relatively nearby galaxies. With the aid of gravitational lensing, a single star (named Icarus) has been observed at 9 billion light-years away.


title: Star

text: The concept of a constellation was known to exist during the Babylonian period. Ancient sky watchers imagined that prominent arrangements of stars formed patterns, and they associated these with particular aspects of nature or their myths. Twelve of these formations lay along the band of the ecliptic and these became the basis of astrology. Many of the more prominent individual stars were given names, particularly with Arabic or Latin designations.


title: Star

text: As well as certain constellations and the Sun itself, individual stars have their own myths. To the Ancient Greeks, some "stars", known as planets (Greek πλανήτης (planētēs), meaning "wanderer"), represented various important deities, from which the names of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were taken. (Uranus and Neptune were Greek and Roman gods, but neither planet was known in Antiquity because of their low brightness. Their names were assigned by later astronomers.)


title: Star

text: Circa 1600, the names of the constellations were used to name the stars in the corresponding regions of the sky. The German astronomer Johann Bayer created a series of star maps and applied Greek letters as designations to the stars in each constellation. Later a numbering system based on the star's right ascension was invented and added to John Flamsteed's star catalogue in his book ""Historia coelestis Britannica"" (the 1712 edition), whereby this numbering system came to be called "Flamsteed designation" or "Flamsteed numbering".


title: Star

text: The internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The International Astronomical Union maintains the Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) which catalogs and standardizes proper names for stars. A number of private companies sell names of stars which are not recognized by the IAU, professional astronomers, or the amateur astronomy community. The British Library calls this an unregulated commercial enterprise, and the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection issued a violation against one such star-naming company for engaging in a deceptive trade practice.


title: Star

text: Although stellar parameters can be expressed in SI units or Gaussian units, it is often most convenient to express mass, luminosity, and radii in solar units, based on the characteristics of the Sun. In 2015, the IAU defined a set of "nominal" solar values (defined as SI constants, without uncertainties) which can be used for quoting stellar parameters:


title: Star

text: The solar mass M was not explicitly defined by the IAU due to the large relative uncertainty (10) of the Newtonian gravitational constant G. Since the product of the Newtonian gravitational constant and solar mass


title: Star

text: together (GM) has been determined to much greater precision, the IAU defined the "nominal" solar mass parameter to be:


title: Star

text: The nominal solar mass parameter can be combined with the most recent (2014) CODATA estimate of the Newtonian gravitational constant G to derive the solar mass to be approximately 1.9885 × 10 kg. Although the exact values for the luminosity, radius, mass parameter, and mass may vary slightly in the future due to observational uncertainties, the 2015 IAU nominal constants will remain the same SI values as they remain useful measures for quoting stellar parameters.


title: Star

text: Large lengths, such as the radius of a giant star or the semi-major axis of a binary star system, are often expressed in terms of the astronomical unit—approximately equal to the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun (150 million km or approximately 93 million miles). In 2012, the IAU defined the astronomical constant to be an exact length in meters: 149,597,870,700 m.


title: Star

text: Stars condense from regions of space of higher matter density, yet those regions are less dense than within a vacuum chamber. These regions—known as "molecular clouds"—consist mostly of hydrogen, with about 23 to 28 percent helium and a few percent heavier elements. One example of such a star-forming region is the Orion Nebula. Most stars form in groups of dozens to hundreds of thousands of stars.


title: Star

text: Massive stars in these groups may powerfully illuminate those clouds, ionizing the hydrogen, and creating H II regions. Such feedback effects, from star formation, may ultimately disrupt the cloud and prevent further star formation.


title: Star

text: All stars spend the majority of their existence as "main sequence stars", fueled primarily by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium within their cores. However, stars of different masses have markedly different properties at various stages of their development. The ultimate fate of more massive stars differs from that of less massive stars, as do their luminosities and the impact they have on their environment. Accordingly, astronomers often group stars by their mass:


title: Star

text: The formation of a star begins with gravitational instability within a molecular cloud, caused by regions of higher density—often triggered by compression of clouds by radiation from massive stars, expanding bubbles in the interstellar medium, the collision of different molecular clouds, or the collision of galaxies (as in a starburst galaxy). When a region reaches a sufficient density of matter to satisfy the criteria for Jeans instability, it begins to collapse under its own gravitational force.


title: Star

text: As the cloud collapses, individual conglomerations of dense dust and gas form "Bok globules". As a globule collapses and the density increases, the gravitational energy converts into heat and the temperature rises. When the protostellar cloud has approximately reached the stable condition of hydrostatic equilibrium, a protostar forms at the core. These pre-main-sequence stars are often surrounded by a protoplanetary disk and powered mainly by the conversion of gravitational energy. The period of gravitational contraction lasts about 10 million years for a star like the sun, up to 100 million years for a red dwarf.


title: Star

text: Early stars of less than 2 are called T Tauri stars, while those with greater mass are Herbig Ae/Be stars. These newly formed stars emit jets of gas along their axis of rotation, which may reduce the angular momentum of the collapsing star and result in small patches of nebulosity known as Herbig–Haro objects.


title: Star

text: These jets, in combination with radiation from nearby massive stars, may help to drive away the surrounding cloud from which the star was formed.


title: Star

text: Early in their development, T Tauri stars follow the Hayashi track—they contract and decrease in luminosity while remaining at roughly the same temperature. Less massive T Tauri stars follow this track to the main sequence, while more massive stars turn onto the Henyey track.


title: Star

text: Most stars are observed to be members of binary star systems, and the properties of those binaries are the result of the conditions in which they formed. A gas cloud must lose its angular momentum in order to collapse and form a star. The fragmentation of the cloud into multiple stars distributes some of that angular momentum. The primordial binaries transfer some angular momentum by gravitational interactions during close encounters with other stars in young stellar clusters. These interactions tend to split apart more widely separated (soft) binaries while causing hard binaries to become more tightly bound. This produces the separation of binaries into their two observed populations distributions.


title: Star

text: Stars spend about 90% of their existence fusing hydrogen into helium in high-temperature and high-pressure reactions in the core region. Such stars are said to be on the main sequence, and are called dwarf stars. Starting at zero-age main sequence, the proportion of helium in a star's core will steadily increase, the rate of nuclear fusion at the core will slowly increase, as will the star's temperature and luminosity.


title: Star

text: The Sun, for example, is estimated to have increased in luminosity by about 40% since it reached the main sequence 4.6 billion (4.6 × 10) years ago.


title: Star

text: Every star generates a stellar wind of particles that causes a continual outflow of gas into space. For most stars, the mass lost is negligible. The Sun loses 10 every year, or about 0.01% of its total mass over its entire lifespan. However, very massive stars can lose 10 to 10 each year, significantly affecting their evolution. Stars that begin with more than 50 can lose over half their total mass while on the main sequence.


title: Star

text: The time a star spends on the main sequence depends primarily on the amount of fuel it has and the rate at which it fuses it. The Sun is expected to live 10 billion (10) years. Massive stars consume their fuel very rapidly and are short-lived. Low mass stars consume their fuel very slowly. Stars less massive than 0.25 , called red dwarfs, are able to fuse nearly all of their mass while stars of about 1 can only fuse about 10% of their mass. The combination of their slow fuel-consumption and relatively large usable fuel supply allows low mass stars to last about one trillion (10) years; the most extreme of 0.08 will last for about 12 trillion years. Red dwarfs become hotter and more luminous as they accumulate helium. When they eventually run out of hydrogen, they contract into a white dwarf and decline in temperature. Since the lifespan of such stars is greater than the current age of the universe (13.8 billion years), no stars under about 0.85 are expected to have moved off the main sequence.


title: Star

text: Besides mass, the elements heavier than helium can play a significant role in the evolution of stars. Astronomers label all elements heavier than helium "metals", and call the chemical concentration of these elements in a star, its metallicity. A star's metallicity can influence the time the star takes to burn its fuel, and controls the formation of its magnetic fields, which affects the strength of its stellar wind. Older, population II stars have substantially less metallicity than the younger, population I stars due to the composition of the molecular clouds from which they formed. Over time, such clouds become increasingly enriched in heavier elements as older stars die and shed portions of their atmospheres.


title: Star

text: As stars of at least 0.4 exhaust the supply of hydrogen at their core, they start to fuse hydrogen in a shell surrounding the helium core. The outer layers of the star expand and cool greatly as they transition into a red giant. In some cases, they will fuse heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core. As the stars expand, they throw part of their mass, enriched with those heavier elements, into the interstellar environment, to be recycled later as new stars. In about 5 billion years, when the Sun enters the helium burning phase, it will expand to a maximum radius of roughly , 250 times its present size, and lose 30% of its current mass.


title: Star

text: As the hydrogen-burning shell produces more helium, the core increases in mass and temperature. In a red giant of up to 2.25 , the mass of the helium core becomes degenerate prior to helium fusion. Finally, when the temperature increases sufficiently, core helium fusion begins explosively in what is called a helium flash, and the star rapidly shrinks in radius, increases its surface temperature, and moves to the horizontal branch of the HR diagram. For more massive stars, helium core fusion starts before the core becomes degenerate, and the star spends some time in the red clump, slowly burning helium, before the outer convective envelope collapses and the star then moves to the horizontal branch.


title: Star

text: After a star has fused the helium of its core, it begins fusing helium along a shell surrounding the hot carbon core. The star then follows an evolutionary path called the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) that parallels the other described red-giant phase, but with a higher luminosity. The more massive AGB stars may undergo a brief period of carbon fusion before the core becomes degenerate. During the AGB phase, stars undergo thermal pulses due to instabilities in the core of the star. In these thermal pulses, the luminosity of the star varies and matter is ejected from the star's atmosphere, ultimately forming a planetary nebula. As much as 50 to 70% of a star's mass can be ejected in this mass loss process. Because energy transport in an AGB star is primarily by convection, this ejected material is enriched with the fusion products dredged up from the core. Therefore, the planetary nebula is enriched with elements like carbon and oxygen. Ultimately, the planetary nebula disperses, enriching the general interstellar medium. Therefore, future generations of stars are made of the "star stuff" from past stars.


title: Star

text: During their helium-burning phase, a star of more than 9 solar masses expands to form first a blue and then a red supergiant. Particularly massive stars may evolve to a Wolf-Rayet star, characterised by spectra dominated by emission lines of elements heavier than hydrogen, which have reached the surface due to strong convection and intense mass loss, or from stripping of the outer layers.


title: Star

text: When helium is exhausted at the core of a massive star, the core contracts and the temperature and pressure rises enough to fuse carbon (see Carbon-burning process). This process continues, with the successive stages being fueled by neon (see neon-burning process), oxygen (see oxygen-burning process), and silicon (see silicon-burning process). Near the end of the star's life, fusion continues along a series of onion-layer shells within a massive star. Each shell fuses a different element, with the outermost shell fusing hydrogen; the next shell fusing helium, and so forth.


title: Star

text: The final stage occurs when a massive star begins producing iron. Since iron nuclei are more tightly bound than any heavier nuclei, any fusion beyond iron does not produce a net release of energy.


title: Star

text: As a star's core shrinks, the intensity of radiation from that surface increases, creating such radiation pressure on the outer shell of gas that it will push those layers away, forming a planetary nebula. If what remains after the outer atmosphere has been shed is less than roughly 1.4 , it shrinks to a relatively tiny object about the size of Earth, known as a white dwarf. White dwarfs lack the mass for further gravitational compression to take place. The electron-degenerate matter inside a white dwarf is no longer a plasma. Eventually, white dwarfs fade into black dwarfs over a very long period of time.


title: Star

text: In massive stars, fusion continues until the iron core has grown so large (more than 1.4 ) that it can no longer support its own mass. This core will suddenly collapse as its electrons are driven into its protons, forming neutrons, neutrinos, and gamma rays in a burst of electron capture and inverse beta decay. The shockwave formed by this sudden collapse causes the rest of the star to explode in a supernova. Supernovae become so bright that they may briefly outshine the star's entire home galaxy. When they occur within the Milky Way, supernovae have historically been observed by naked-eye observers as "new stars" where none seemingly existed before.


title: Star

text: A supernova explosion blows away the star's outer layers, leaving a remnant such as the Crab Nebula. The core is compressed into a neutron star, which sometimes manifests itself as a pulsar or X-ray burster. In the case of the largest stars, the remnant is a black hole greater than 4 . In a neutron star the matter is in a state known as neutron-degenerate matter, with a more exotic form of degenerate matter, QCD matter, possibly present in the core.


title: Star

text: The blown-off outer layers of dying stars include heavy elements, which may be recycled during the formation of new stars. These heavy elements allow the formation of rocky planets. The outflow from supernovae and the stellar wind of large stars play an important part in shaping the interstellar medium.


title: Star

text: The evolution of binary stars may be significantly different from the evolution of single stars of the same mass. If stars in a binary system are sufficiently close, when one of the stars expands to become a red giant it may overflow its Roche lobe, the region around a star where material is gravitationally bound to that star, leading to transfer of material to the other. When the Roche lobe is overflowed, a variety of phenomena can result, including contact binaries, common-envelope binaries, cataclysmic variables, blue stragglers, and type Ia supernovae. Mass transfer leads to cases such as the Algol paradox, where the most-evolved star in a system is the least massive.


title: Star

text: The evolution of binary and higher-order star systems is intensely researched since so many stars have been found to be members of binary systems. Around half of Sun-like stars, and an even higher proportion of more massive stars, form in multiple systems and this may greatly influence such phenomena as novae and supernovae, the formation of certain types of star, and the enrichment of space with nucleosynthesis products.


title: Star

text: The influence of binary star evolution on the formation of evolved massive stars such as luminous blue variables, Wolf-Rayet stars, and the progenitors of certain classes of core collapse supernova is still disputed. Single massive stars may be unable to expel their outer layers fast enough to form the types and numbers of evolved stars that are observed, or to produce progenitors that would explode as the supernovae that are observed. Mass transfer through gravitational stripping in binary systems is seen by some astronomers as the solution to that problem.


title: Star

text: Stars are not spread uniformly across the universe, but are normally grouped into galaxies along with interstellar gas and dust. A typical large galaxy like the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars. There are more than 2 trillion (10) galaxies, though most are less than 10% the mass of the Milky Way. Overall, there are likely to be between and stars (more stars than all the grains of sand on planet Earth). Most stars are within galaxies, but between 10 and 50% of the starlight in large galaxy clusters may come from stars outside of any galaxy.


title: Star

text: A multi-star system consists of two or more gravitationally bound stars that orbit each other. The simplest and most common multi-star system is a binary star, but systems of three or more stars exist. For reasons of orbital stability, such multi-star systems are often organized into hierarchical sets of binary stars. Larger groups are called star clusters. These range from loose stellar associations with only a few stars to open clusters with dozens to thousands of stars, up to enormous globular clusters with hundreds of thousands of stars. Such systems orbit their host galaxy. The stars in an open or globular cluster all formed from the same giant molecular cloud, so all members normally have similar ages and compositions.


title: Star

text: Many stars are observed and most or all may have originally formed in gravitationally bound, multiple-star systems. This is particularly true for very massive O and B class stars, 80% of which are believed to be part of multiple-star systems. The proportion of single star systems increases with decreasing star mass, so that only 25% of red dwarfs are known to have stellar companions. As 85% of all stars are red dwarfs, more than two thirds of stars in the Milky Way are likely single red dwarfs.


title: Star

text: In a 2017 study of the Perseus molecular cloud, astronomers found that most of the newly formed stars are in binary systems. In the model that best explained the data, all stars initially formed as binaries, though some binaries later split up and leave single stars behind.


title: Star

text: The nearest star to the Earth, apart from the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, away. Travelling at the orbital speed of the Space Shuttle, , it would take about 150,000 years to arrive. This is typical of stellar separations in galactic discs. Stars can be much closer to each other in the centres of galaxies and in globular clusters, or much farther apart in galactic halos.


title: Star

text: Due to the relatively vast distances between stars outside the galactic nucleus, collisions between stars are thought to be rare. In denser regions such as the core of globular clusters or the galactic center, collisions can be more common. Such collisions can produce what are known as blue stragglers. These abnormal stars have a higher surface temperature and thus are bluer than stars at the main sequence turnoff in the cluster to which they belong; in standard stellar evolution, blue stragglers would already have evolved off the main sequence and thus would not be seen in the cluster.


title: Star

text: Almost everything about a star is determined by its initial mass, including such characteristics as luminosity, size, evolution, lifespan, and its eventual fate.


title: Star

text: Most stars are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old. Some stars may even be close to 13.8 billion years old—the observed age of the universe. The oldest star yet discovered, HD 140283, nicknamed Methuselah star, is an estimated 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years old. (Due to the uncertainty in the value, this age for the star does not conflict with the age of the universe, determined by the Planck satellite as 13.799 ± 0.021).


title: Star

text: The more massive the star, the shorter its lifespan, primarily because massive stars have greater pressure on their cores, causing them to burn hydrogen more rapidly. The most massive stars last an average of a few million years, while stars of minimum mass (red dwarfs) burn their fuel very slowly and can last tens to hundreds of billions of years.


title: Star

text: When stars form in the present Milky Way galaxy, they are composed of about 71% hydrogen and 27% helium, as measured by mass, with a small fraction of heavier elements. Typically the portion of heavy elements is measured in terms of the iron content of the stellar atmosphere, as iron is a common element and its absorption lines are relatively easy to measure. The portion of heavier elements may be an indicator of the likelihood that the star has a planetary system.


title: Star

text: The star with the lowest iron content ever measured is the dwarf HE1327-2326, with only 1/200,000th the iron content of the Sun. By contrast, the super-metal-rich star μ Leonis has nearly double the abundance of iron as the Sun, while the planet-bearing star 14 Herculis has nearly triple the iron. Chemically peculiar stars show unusual abundances of certain elements in their spectrum; especially chromium and rare earth elements. Stars with cooler outer atmospheres, including the Sun, can form various diatomic and polyatomic molecules.


title: Star

text: Due to their great distance from the Earth, all stars except the Sun appear to the unaided eye as shining points in the night sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere. The Sun is close enough to the Earth to appear as a disk instead, and to provide daylight. Other than the Sun, the star with the largest apparent size is R Doradus, with an angular diameter of only 0.057 arcseconds.


title: Star

text: The disks of most stars are much too small in angular size to be observed with current ground-based optical telescopes, and so interferometer telescopes are required to produce images of these objects. Another technique for measuring the angular size of stars is through occultation. By precisely measuring the drop in brightness of a star as it is occulted by the Moon (or the rise in brightness when it reappears), the star's angular diameter can be computed.


title: Star

text: Stars range in size from neutron stars, which vary anywhere from 20 to in diameter, to supergiants like Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation, which has a diameter about 1,000 times that of the Sun with a much lower density.


title: Star

text: The motion of a star relative to the Sun can provide useful information about the origin and age of a star, as well as the structure and evolution of the surrounding galaxy. The components of motion of a star consist of the radial velocity toward or away from the Sun, and the traverse angular movement, which is called its proper motion.


title: Star

text: Radial velocity is measured by the doppler shift of the star's spectral lines and is given in units of km/s. The proper motion of a star, its parallax, is determined by precise astrometric measurements in units of milli-arc seconds (mas) per year. With knowledge of the star's parallax and its distance, the proper motion velocity can be calculated. Together with the radial velocity, the total velocity can be calculated. Stars with high rates of proper motion are likely to be relatively close to the Sun, making them good candidates for parallax measurements.


title: Star

text: When both rates of movement are known, the space velocity of the star relative to the Sun or the galaxy can be computed. Among nearby stars, it has been found that younger population I stars have generally lower velocities than older, population II stars. The latter have elliptical orbits that are inclined to the plane of the galaxy. A comparison of the kinematics of nearby stars has allowed astronomers to trace their origin to common points in giant molecular clouds, and are referred to as stellar associations.


title: Star

text: The magnetic field of a star is generated within regions of the interior where convective circulation occurs. This movement of conductive plasma functions like a dynamo, wherein the movement of electrical charges induce magnetic fields, as does a mechanical dynamo. Those magnetic fields have a great range that extend throughout and beyond the star. The strength of the magnetic field varies with the mass and composition of the star, and the amount of magnetic surface activity depends upon the star's rate of rotation. This surface activity produces starspots, which are regions of strong magnetic fields and lower than normal surface temperatures. Coronal loops are arching magnetic field flux lines that rise from a star's surface into the star's outer atmosphere, its corona. The coronal loops can be seen due to the plasma they conduct along their length. Stellar flares are bursts of high-energy particles that are emitted due to the same magnetic activity.


title: Star

text: Young, rapidly rotating stars tend to have high levels of surface activity because of their magnetic field. The magnetic field can act upon a star's stellar wind, functioning as a brake to gradually slow the rate of rotation with time. Thus, older stars such as the Sun have a much slower rate of rotation and a lower level of surface activity. The activity levels of slowly rotating stars tend to vary in a cyclical manner and can shut down altogether for periods of time. During


title: Star

text: with 100–150 times as much mass as the Sun, will have a lifespan of only several million years. Studies of the most massive open clusters suggests as a rough upper limit for stars in the current era of the universe. This


title: Star

text: represents an empirical value for the theoretical limit on the mass of forming stars due to increasing radiation pressure on the accreting gas cloud. Several stars in the R136 cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud have been measured with larger masses, but


title: Star

text: it has been determined that they could have been created through the collision and merger of massive stars in close binary systems, sidestepping the 150 limit on massive star formation.


title: Star

text: to the complete absence of elements heavier than lithium in their composition. This generation of supermassive population III stars is likely to have existed in the very early universe (i.e., they are observed to have a high redshift), and may have started the production of chemical elements heavier than hydrogen that are needed for the later formation of planets and life. In June 2015, astronomers reported evidence for Population III stars in the Cosmos Redshift 7 galaxy at .