What are the four stages in the life cycle of a low mass star?
Stars about the size of our sun go through the same first four stages as does any other star. They begin their lives as a nebula, then become a Protostar, eventually becoming a main sequence star and finally a red giant.
What type of stars are low mass?
Low mass stars (stars with masses less than half the mass of the Sun) are the smallest, coolest and dimmest Main Sequence stars and orange, red or brown in colour. Low mass stars use up their hydrogen fuel very slowly and consequently have long lives.
What is the end product of the life of a low mass star?
Over its lifetime, a low mass star consumes its core hydrogen and converts it into helium. The core shrinks and heats up gradually and the star gradually becomes more luminous. Eventually nuclear fusion exhausts all the hydrogen in the star’s core.
How do high mass stars die?
All stars eventually run out of their hydrogen gas fuel and die. When a high-mass star has no hydrogen left to burn, it expands and becomes a red supergiant. While most stars quietly fade away, the supergiants destroy themselves in a huge explosion, called a supernova.
What is the last stage of a high mass star?
Stage 9 – The remaining core (thats 80% of the original star) is now in its final stages. The core becomes a White Dwarf the star eventually cools and dims. When it stops shining, the now dead star is called a Black Dwarf.
What are the 5 stages of a high-mass star?
The exact stages of evolutions are:
- Subgiant Branch (SGB) – hydrogen shell burning – outer layers swell.
- Red Giant Branch – helium ash core compresses – increased hydrogen shell burning.
- First Dredge Up – expanding atmosphere cools star – stirs carbon, nitrogen and oxygen upward – star heats up.
What will the Sun’s final stage be?
Once its supply of hydrogen is exhausted, the final, dramatic stages of its life will unfold, as our host star expands to become a red giant and then tears its body to pieces to condense into a white dwarf. Then, it will shrink down to a tiny, extremely dense white dwarf star, about Earth-size.
What happens before a star dies?
When the helium fuel runs out, the core will expand and cool. The upper layers will expand and eject material that will collect around the dying star to form a planetary nebula. Finally, the core will cool into a white dwarf and then eventually into a black dwarf. This entire process will take a few billion years.
Why do stars twinkle physics?
Stars twinkle because … they’re so far away from Earth that, even through large telescopes, they appear only as pinpoints. As a star’s light pierces our atmosphere, each single stream of starlight is refracted – caused to change direction, slightly – by the various temperature and density layers in Earth’s atmosphere.
Why do stars twinkle at night?
The movement of air (sometimes called turbulence) in the Earth’s atmosphere causes the starlight to get slightly bent as it travels from the distant star through the atmosphere to us on the ground. Stars closer to the horizon appear to twinkle more than others.
Why do stars twinkle Class 8?
The stars twinkle in the night sky because of the effects of our atmosphere. When starlight enters our atmosphere it is affected by winds in the atmosphere and by areas with different temperatures and densities. This causes the light from the star to twinkle when seen from the ground due to atmospheric refraction.