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Stellar Evolution
Stellar Evolution
evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes
during its lifetime.
Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges
from a few million years for the most massive to trillions
of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer
than the age of the universe.
Steller Nebulae, birthplaces of stars, are
clouds of hydrogen and dust in space.
The brightest stars have masses 100 times that of the Sun
and emit as much light as millions of Suns. They live for
less than a million years before exploding as supernovae.
The faintest stars are the Red Dwarfs, less than one-
thousandth the brightness of the Sun.
RED GIANT is a large bright star with a cool surface
Very large Red Giants are often called Super Giants, having
diameters up to 1000 times that of the Sun and have
luminosities often 1 million times greater than the Sun.
White Dwarf
When a star like our Sun runs out of its nuclear fuel in about
five billion years time, it will go through a beautiful death
ritual, shedding its outer layers in a blaze of color while its
inside squeezes down into a dense white hot ball about the
size of the Earth. This ball, aptly named a WHITE DWARF,
is where the story ends for the stars like Sun.
SUPERNOVA
About 2/3 of all stars in a galaxy are binaries. One star may run through
its life cycle faster, becoming a white dwarf while the other star
continues to shine normally.
The white dwarf is greedy, and if the orbit of the white dwarf and its
companion is close, the white dwarf’s strong gravity begins to tug the
outer layers of hydrogen gas from the companion and wrap the gas
around itself
The hydrogen layer grows, getting hotter and hotter, until at a
critical temperature the bomb goes off – a thermonuclear
explosion as bright as a billion stars, and a flash that can be
seen across the observable universe
Type 1 supernova was seen in our own galaxy by Johannes Kepler in 1604, five years
before the invention of the telescope.
This image is a composite of observations from three space telescopes, Hubble (yellow),
Chandra (blue and green) and Spitzer (red) of the remnants of the star Kepler saw in the sky
four centuries ago. The ball of debris is now about 8 light years across and still expanding.
Type II Supernova