Star Life Cycle

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At the beginning of a star's life, it is first a nebula. Nebulas are what's left of stars after massive stars turn into red supergiants and then explode. This massive explosion is called a supernova. A nebula is a big cloud of hydrogen and helium filled gas. These nebulae are the place where all stars are born. The hydrogen and helium are what fuels the star during its life.

Every star has a life cycle it must go through depending on its size. Our average sized sun is at the very beginning of its life. Our sun will stay in its average stage for several more billion years due to its size. Eventually, our sun will become a giant red ball of fiery gases, called a red giant. Yet still being the large ball of gas it always was, our sun will …show more content…
Eventually, the nuclear reactions will move into the atmosphere and burn the hydrogen in a shell that surrounds the core. Due to the previous reaction, the star will begin to enlarge and turn into a red color. Our old star, an average star, is now categorized as a red giant. About more than 400 times its original size, it now burns even more hydrogen.

The red giant is a huge star with a diameter 1000 times bigger than the sun. It also has luminosities 1,000,000 times brighter than the sun. Although the red giant is bigger and brighter than that of the sun, a red giant is cooler that an average star. While an average star is about 5,600 degrees celsius, a red giant is only 2,000 to 3,000 degrees celsius. These temperatures are not that hot, considering the temperature of the white dwarf which is around 100,000 degrees celsius.

While the sun is growing, it will consume the inner planets in our solar system and decimate these planets. While the other parts of the sun continue to grow, the core begins to shrink due to gravity. The pressure and temperatures increase in the middle until the conditions are just right for nuclear fusion to continue. This is now the second phase of a red giant star. Now instead of hydrogen, the sun uses helium to power the nuclear …show more content…
It will turn a little more blue, but this won't last for long. Due to the helium running out really quickly, this stage only lasts for around a million years. The helium then burns around the core while the hydrogen burns around the helium. The outer layers cool, and the color turns back to red.

The red giant then turns to a planetary nebula which is not a planet, but was named that because early astronomers thought the gases were planets. A planetary nebula is hot, expanding plasma. The gases are highly unstable and they start to pulsate. The plasma is then cast off into space by stellar winds. These planetary nebulas are not there for long, because they only last for tens of thousands of years. The outer layers are cast away and the gasses help make a new star

When the outer layers of a planetary nebula is cast away, it leaves a core of gases that are extremely hot. These stars are classified as white dwarfs, which burn at around 100,000 degrees celsius. This is the hottest an average star will burn for its entire lifetime. Although they are very hot, the star itself is not very bright, due to its small size. These stars only make up roughly 6% of all the stars in our sun's
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