BLACK HOLES

NEBULA
A star begins its life as a cloud of dust and gas known as a nebula.

STAR AND GAS COME TOGETHER If the gas and dust of a nebula get close enough together, gravity pulls them into a giant spinning ball. PROTOSTAR As the ball spins, it gets hotter and more tightly packed, leading to the birth of a protostar. Eventually, nuclear fusionin which two atoms fuse together to form another type of atombegins. Here, hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium. Nuclear fusion releases huge

amounts of energy that fuels a star throughout its life. STAR A protostar becomes a star when it reaches a temperature of 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius). Then, the star begins to shine. RED GIANT A star turns into a red giant when its hydrogen fuel begins to run out. The star's core shrinks and the outer layers expand, cool, and become less bright. A red giant glows with a red color. WHITE DWARF A white dwarf forms when a small- to medium-sized starone that is up to eight times the mass of the Sunuses up its fuel

and collapses. A white dwarf is very densea spoonful of its core can weigh as much as a dump truck. White dwarfs continue to glow because of energy trapped in their core. SUPERNOVA A supernova occurs when a very massive starone that is more than eight times the mass of the Sunuses up its fuel and collapses under its own weight. The collapse leads to an explosion that sends a shock wave through space. The supernova may completely destroy the star, or it may leave the core of the star intact. NEUTRON STAR A neutron star forms from the core of a star that has undergone a supernova. The atoms

in the star condense and collapse until two of the particles that compose atoms, protons and electrons, fuse to form neutrons, another type of atomic particle. Neutron stars have the highest density of any type of stara teaspoonful of the stars crust would weigh ten billion tons on the surface of Earth. BLACK HOLE When an extremely massive star undergoes a supernova, the remaining core shrinks and eventually collapses completely. The collapsed core forms a black hole, which has such a strong pull of gravity that nothing can escape it, not even light.