Stellar Evolution

The Color of Stars

• Stars come in a wide range of sizes and colors, from yellow stars
to red dwarfs, from blue giants to red super giants.
• Warm objects emit infrared. Extremely hot objects emit visible
light as well. The color they emit depends on how hot they are.
• In Astronomy the colors work the opposite way around to
everyday life:
oRed is a cool color (well, if you call 4000 Kelvin Cool)
oBlue is a very hot color (corresponding to a temperature of
around 10 000 Kelvin).
• By measuring the color of a star, astronomers can figure out the
star’s surface temperature.
Solar Mass Stars

• 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.
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).
• 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 center
will continue to collapse under the force of gravity until it forms a black
hole.
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:
oHow much light the star emits.
oHow 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.
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams
A Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a plot showing:
• Going from hot on the left to cold on the right –
the opposite way to normal.
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.