PHYSICS

STELLAR EVOLUTION
HOW STARS CAN BE
CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO
THEIR COLOUR.
▪ Stars come in a wide range of sizes and colours, from yellow stars to red dwarfs, from blue
giants to red supergiants.
COLOUR & TEMPERATURE
KNOW THAT A STAR’S COLOUR IS RELATED TO ITS SURFACE TEMPERATURE .
▪ Warm objects emit infrared. Extremely hot objects emit visible light as well. The color they
emit depends on how hot they are.
▪ The temperature of a star affects its colour: The coolest stars are red; the hottest ones are blue
In Astronomy the colours work the opposite way around to everyday life:
▪ Red is a cool colour (well, if you call 4000 Kelvin Cool)
▪ Blue is a very hot colour (corresponding to a temperature of around 10 000 Kelvin).
▪ By measuring the colour of a star, astronomers can figure out the star’s surface temperature.
 LIFE CYCLE OF STAR
▪ All stars form from a giant cloud of hydrogen gas, called a nebula.
▪ The force of gravity within a nebula pulls the gas together until it forms a hot ball of gas,
known as a protostar.
▪ Once the protostar gets hot enough, nuclear reactions start within its core and it becomes a
main sequence star.
▪ Solar mass stars have life spans of the order of billions of years.
▪ (The Sun’s lifespan is anticipated to be around 10 billion years – we’re about half way through it).
▪ Eventually the Sun will reach a stage when it starts to run out of hydrogen gas in its core. Once this
happens, the nuclear reactions in the core will start to die down.
▪ When this happens the core will start to shrink and heat up, starting a new series of reactions around the
core. These will cause the outer part of the Sun to swell up and it will become a red giant.
▪ Once this second stage of reactions have finished, the core will collapse completely, becoming a white
dwarf whilst the outer parts will be ejected, forming a spherical cloud of gas around the white dwarf – a
planetary nebula.
 LARGER STARS
▪ Stars that are larger than the Sun have much shorter lifespans – perhaps in the region of
hundreds of millions of years (instead of billions).
▪ The lifecycle of a star much larger than the Sun
HOW THE BRIGHTNESS OF A
STAR AT A STANDARD DISTANCE
CAN BE REPRESENTED USING
ABSOLUTE
▪ MAGNITUDE.
Astronomers measure the brightness of stars using the magnitude scale. This scale runs back
to front: The brighter the star, the smaller the magnitude.
▪ The brightness of a star depends on two main things:
▪ How much light the star emits.
▪ How far away the star it (more distant stars are usually fainter than nearby stars).
▪ The absolute magnitude of stars is a measure of how bright they would be if they were all the
same distance away from us.
▪ As with the apparent magnitude of a star, the greater the brighter the star, the lower the
magnitude.
▪ When the nuclear fuel in the core of a large star starts to run out, the star will swell up once
again, but this time it will form a much larger star – a red supergiant.
▪ Once the reactions inside the red supergiant finally finish, the core of the star will collapse
suddenly causing a gigantic explosion – a supernova.
▪ At the centre of this explosion a dense body, called a neutron star will form.
▪ The outer remnants of the star will be cast off into space, forming a nebula.
▪ In the case of the biggest stars, the neutron star that forms at the centre will continue to collapse
under the force of gravity until it forms a black hole
MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE
HERTZSPRUNG–RUSSELL
DIAGRAM (HR DIAGRAM).
▪ A Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a plot showing:
▪ The absolute magnitude of a star of the y-axis.(Going from dim at the bottom to bright at the
top.)
▪ The temperature of a star on the x-axis.(Going from hot on the left to cold on the right – the
opposite way to normal.)
▪ Stars are classified with the help of Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams. Note how the temperature
runs from hot to cold on the x-axis
▪ The main features of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram are:
▪ Most stars lie on the Main Sequence – a band of stars going from top left to bottom right.
▪ Below the main sequence (and slightly to the left) are the White Dwarfs.
▪ Above the main sequence on the right hand side are the Red Giants and above those are the Red
Supergiants.