Life cycle of a star/HR diagram

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What is the life cycle of a star?

Back

The life cycle of a star is the series of stages that a star goes through from its formation in a nebula to its eventual death, which can result in a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole.

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What is a Nebula?

Back

A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space, where stars are born and can also be the remnants of dead stars.

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What is a Protostar?

Back

A protostar is an early stage in the formation of a star, where the gas and dust in a nebula begin to collapse under gravity, forming a dense core.

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What is the Main Sequence?

Back

The Main Sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness, where stars spend most of their life cycle fusing hydrogen into helium.

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What are White Dwarfs?

Back

White dwarfs are small, dense remnants of stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel and shed their outer layers, typically found at the end of a star's life cycle.

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What are Blue Giants?

Back

Blue giants are very hot, massive stars that are much brighter than the Sun and have a short life span.

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What are Red Giants?

Back

Red giants are stars that have expanded and cooled after exhausting the hydrogen in their cores, resulting in a reddish appearance.

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What happens to a star as it moves to the left on the HR diagram?

Back

As a star moves to the left on the HR diagram, it gets hotter and typically brighter.

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What color are the hottest stars?

Back

The hottest stars are blue.

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What is a Black Hole?

Back

A black hole is a region of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it, often formed from the remnants of massive stars.