THE LIFE OF A STAR

Untitled Slide

NEBULA

• Stars are born in clouds of dust and gas out in space.
• (Hydrogen, helium, as well as other ionised gasses)

AVERAGE STAR

• Our Sun is an average star.
• An average star will eject all its outer layers so that the core is exposed.
• The centre of the star is called a 'White Dwarf.'

MASSIVE STAR

• Instead of turning into an average star the new star can become a Massive Star.
• Massive stars are so dense that they don't live as long as other stars and normally end in a violent supernova.
• However, before their death they will expand into a ginormous Super Red Giant.

RED GIANT

• Red giants are stars that have used up all of the hydrogen fuel at their cores.
• These stars now rely on the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen.
• They expand to have a radii tens of thousands of times larger than that of our own Sun.

PLANETARY NEBULA

• Once the red giant starts to reach the end of its life it turns into a planetary nebula, which is a kind of emission nebula.
• It is a glowing shell of ionised gas.

WHITE DWARF STAR

• The White Dwarf star is one of the last stages of a start before it explodes.
• The mass of a white dwarf star is so dense that just a teaspoon of it would weigh more than the entire Earth.
• This density is also what keeps the star from exploding due to the outward pressure caused by the intense heat of it.

NEUTRON STAR OR BLACK HOLE

• In the finally stages of its life a star will either turn into a neutron star or a black hole.

NEUTRON STAR

• A Neutron Star is the remain of the gravitational collapse of a star.
• They are the smallest stars in the known universe, but also the densest. They can be smaller than our moon and have a mass that is two times as large as our sun.

BLACK HOLE

• A Black hole is a space in the universe where the gravitational pull of one point is so strong that it even sucks light into it.
• Black holes can be the result of a supernova.

THE END...