Every atom in everyone and everything in the universe was created by the death of a star, or from the Big Bang itself. How stars burn and eventually die out is part of a process known as stellar evolution. A star will begin its life as a cloud of gas, and with the help of gravity, the cloud will condense to form a star, which burns happily most of its long life. However, when the star’s fuel begins to run out, the star will change once again. The change a star undergoes is directly affected by the its mass, so therefore a star with low mass will go through a different change than a star with a larger mass. The birth of a star begins as a nebula, an enormous cloud made up of the interstellar medium. The interstellar medium is all of the matter …show more content…
The temperature of the star has to be very high in order for the star to begin the process of nucleosynthesis, the process where the nuclei of lighter elements fuse together to form different nuclei, releasing energy in the process. A star can have a lifespan of millions, billions, or even trillions of years, depending on the mass of the star. Stars with a low to average mass, like our Sun, will burn longer than stars with a very large mass, because the process of nucleosynthesis will speed up for stars with a larger mass, causing their lifespan to be shorter than that of a star with a lower mass. The process of nucleosynthesis takes hydrogen and burns it into heavier elements, such as helium, allowing new elements form. A star will remain a main sequence star most of its life, burning all of the hydrogen into helium, and burning the helium into heavier …show more content…
After stars with a low to average mass, such as our Sun, have burned all of the hydrogen atoms into helium, the core of the star will condense, releasing heat. This will cause the outer core of the star to expand, making it a red giant. Moreover, approximately 5 billion years in the future, our Sun will become a red giant, and will grow so large, the outer core will almost reach Earth, which is about 92 million miles away from where the Sun is now. When the temperature of the star is high enough, the helium will then begin to burn into carbon. At this stage, the star will expand and cool down, and begin releasing materials which become the planetary nebula. A planetary nebula is a nebula that is shaped like a ring around a dying star. The star will finally collapse to form a white dwarf, which is a very dense and small star that has the same mass as the Sun, but the volume of Earth. After stars with a greater mass have burned all of the hydrogen atoms into helium, they will burn the helium into carbon. However, unlike stars with a lower mass, these stars have enough mass to continue the process of nucleosynthesis, and burn the carbon into heavier elements like oxygen, silicon, and more. The process ends when the core finally becomes iron, and can’t burn any longer. The star rapidly collapses under its own gravity, as the iron core rises in temperature. The outer layer eventually collapses on the tiny core,
The changes that occur during a star 's life are called stellar evolution. The mass of a star determines the ultimate fate of a star. Stars that are more massive burn their fuel quicker and lead shorter lives. Because stars shine, they must change. The energy they lose by emitting light must come from the matter of which the star is made. This will lead to a change in its composition. Stars are formed from the material between stars, shine until they exhaust their fuel, and then die a predictable death based upon their initial mass.
As this slow contraction continues, the core temperature, density, and pressure of the star continues to increase. As the star shrinks it becomes so dense that it starts to compress helium. This results in the star to swell due to the hot core and leaving a relatively cool surface. Eventually the outer layers of the star expand outwards, increasing the size of the star. As the layers continue to expand, the surface temperature continues to cool, forming a relatively large star called a red giant.
Comparing red giants to the sun, they are about 1000 times larger. Compared to the sun’s temperature, a red giants temperature is about half as much. This is because the same amount of energy has to be spread out across a much more massive star causing it to be cooler than it was before. The name red giant was given to these stars because the change in temperature causes the star to shine in the redder part of the spectrum. Stars can spend anywhere between 1000 years and one billion years in the red giant phase. After a certain amount of time, the helium finally runs out and fusion stops. Since there is no more helium, gravity pushes the star inward. The stars outer atmosphere is then blown out into huge clouds of gas and dust which is known as planetary nebulae. These clouds of gas and dust are then made to make new stars. As for the core of the star, it is still there. The star is now a white dwarf. White dwarf stars occur when the red giant loses its outer atmosphere. White dwarf stars are extremely hot because they are composed of only the core of the star which is the hottest
Just like humans, everything in the universe has a purpose. From the beginning of the moment anything is created into existence it grows and fulfills its purpose. Stars are no different. Every day, stars are created by gravity which pulls the star together, the star builds up heat and pressure, and then fusion begins. The process in which a star goes through is known as a star's life cycle. All stars start at the basic nebula phase, change to a protostar, and go on to the main sequence star phase. After the main sequence star phase, there are two different divisions that are determined by the mass of the star. If a star is known as a low-mass star it will have different life changes than a high-mass star. A low-mass star will become a
The magnificent object in the sky, which illuminates our world; our Sun, is only one of many of the infernos in space we call stars. As it happens, we can actually thank all of these entities for the creation of our planet, our race, and ultimately life itself. As with most science, its of course not as simple as the statement “We are made of Stardust”, but there is certainly a great deal of credibility to that statement. That credibility ultimately boils down to a process called “Nucleosynthesis”. Stars created all elements, except Hydrogen, which was created after the Big Bang. On the list of elements created by Stars are Carbon, which is the base of life, and Oxygen which sustains life. Along side it is the reality, that just as Stars created
The Low mass stars spend there main life as a fusion machine which turns hydrogen into helium and a very slow and methodical pace. When the energy released by this fusion reaches the surface it is released into space and this is the star luminosity. Over a long, long time sometimes billions of years a low mass star consumes the hydrogen in its core and converts it to helium, at which point the core starts to contract and shrink. Once all of the hydrogen inside the stars core begins to become totally exhausted, the core pressure gives way to the crush of gravity because it has no more fusion occurring in its core at that time. As the core shrinks rapidly and the outer layers start to expand the stars shape begins to grow in size and its luminosity becomes extraordinary brighter due to the outer shell starting to produce fusion more rapidly then the core did during the main sequence life of the star. As this situation grows more rapidly and extreme the core starts to rapidly burn again and fuse its core helium into carbon. Then just before its final death the star ejects its outer layers into space. This leaves only the degenerate carbon core and since this core is still very hot it emits intensely powerful ultraviolet radiation and glows brightly in what is known as a planetary nebula. The nebula fades and cools over around a million or so years and we are left with a white dwarf cooling indefinitely till
The Nebula is the first stage which the star is born. The Nebula is actually a cloud of hydrogen gas and dust in space. There are a couple different types of
Stars are born in a Nebulae which a clouds of dust and gas (mostly hydrogen). In the stellar nurseries the dense parts undergo gravitational collapse and compress into a rotating gas globule. The globule is cooled by emitting radio waves and infrared radiation. It is compressed by gravitational forces and also by shock waves of pressure from supernova or the hot gas released from nearby bright stars. These forces cause the roughly-spherical globule to collapse and rotate. The process of collapse takes from between 10,000 to 1,000,000 years.
You are probably wondering where did these things come from and how are they formed? Well I am about to tell you, Low mass stars are formed when all the helium has fused into carbon, then the core collapses. As the star collapses, the outer layers of the star are expelled. A planetary nebula is formed by the outer layers a massive star that will undergo a supernova explosion. Then when the low mass star is done forming after billions of years they start to become giants.
After a star lives for about 1 million years, it becomes a main sequence star. Once it becomes a main sequence star, it will then go through a proton-proton chain reaction. Since the force of gravity goes inward, the force of fusion will then go outward from the core. This process will continue for about 10 billion years even when the star is "burning" Over those ten years, the stars will eventually slowly run out of hydrogen. After it runs out of hydrogen, the core will fill up with helium.
The first process every star goes through before its end is the process of their core shrinking. When stars of at least .4 M begin to exhaust their hydrogen supply, the hydrogen starts to fuse in a shell that is outside the helium core. As the shell burns more hydrogen it is also producing more helium, this allows the core to increase in its mass and temperature. When the temperature increases greatly, helium fusion begins to start in what is called a helium flash, causing the star to rapidly decrease in its size and increase its temperature. Once the star has fused all of the helium out of its core, the product of the carbon will fuse which produces a hot core along with the outer shell made up of fusing helium. The more massive a star is,
Although once foreign giants to man, stars live some of the most explosive lives possible. Over billions of years, the violent development of stars from conception to death is one that had perplexed mankind for a while. Though as we formed a better understanding of how they develop, humans have learned that these stellar orbs directly influence the formation of, or death of objects in the universe. Stars are phenomenal objects in our universe that are instrumental to its development.
Before a star is born, massive clouds of dust and gas are pulled together by gravity in space, called a stellar nebula. These massive clouds are pulled to the center of the collapse into a number of points, or course within them. In the middle of the core, several events
Throughout the universe, there are dense molecular or dust clouds, known as interstellar clouds, and they are the first stage of a star. These clouds are incredibly large, containing thousands of times the mass of the Sun, and while they start out stable, for them to one day become a star, they must become unstable. Once this happens, they are no longer able to withstand their own gravity and they break into smaller pieces. The trigger for these events are still unknown, but astronomers think it is caused by some external event that forces the cloud to the next stage: cloud fragments.
Indecent bodies like the sun. Stars are made up of big exploding balls of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium. The sun is similarly a star made up of huge amounts of hydrogen, undergoing a continuous nuclear reaction like a hydrogen bomb. Stars come about when vast clouds of hydrogen, helium and dust contract and collapse due to gravity. The clouds came from astronomical plasma from “The Big Bang”, but the dust comes from the supernovae of other stars.