Star Life Cycle

By Tom Harvey
March 16, 2010
 Audience and Scope

The intended audience for this description are amateur astronomers or people who started
developing an interest in astronomy. The readers have some knowledge in science from
taking science classes in high school and are familiar with some chemistry terms. This
article will give readers an understanding of important concepts in astronomy. Readers
will learn the life cycle of a star and all the stages a star will go through from the time it
is born until its death.

Introduction

On a night where there are no clouds, no light pollution, or moonlight, it is possible to see
over 5,000 stars in the sky with the help of very good eyesight. Although this may seem
like a lot of stars, the number of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to have
between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. These hot bodies of glowing gas will each live
and die through a star life cycle. The star life cycle is a very long process in which a star
is created and goes through a series of life stages.

There are three different paths of life that a star will take depending on the mass of the
star when it is initially created. All stars will begin their lives as protostars and then
change into main sequence stars. Then a star will become a certain type of red giant and
end its life as a black dwarf, black hole, or neutron star.

Proto Star
Before a star is created, gas and dust made from mostly hydrogen, carbon, and silicon are
collected in a big cloud known as a planetary nebula.
In certain regions of the nebula, gravity causes this gas
and dust to clump together. The gravity will continue
to increase as more and more clusters of gas and dust
are brought together resulting in a protostar. The image
to the left shows the Eagle Nebula, one of the most
famous nebulas in astronomy, along with several
protostars being formed.

Protostars are not very stable and will die off if they
cannot maintain equilibrium. In order to maintain
equilibrium the gravity pulling the atoms toward the center must be in balance with the

Figure 1: Eagle Nebula with protoastars

gas pressure of atom collisions pushing heat and light away from the center of the
protostar. If this equilibrium is met, the protostar will stop increasing in mass and be able
to live and continue to the next phase of its life.

Main Sequence

After the protostar stage, a star will go into a phase known as the main sequence. Stars
will spend the majority of their lives in this phase. Our sun, shown in Figure 2, is halfway
through its life at about 4.5 billion years old and is currently a main sequence star. The
time a star spends in the main sequence depends largely on how much mass it has. A star
that is about 10 times the size of our sun will live no more than 20 million years in this
stage. This is a dramatic difference to stars like the sun which will spend approximately
10 billion years as main sequence stars.

While in the main sequence, a star will undergo a

process known as nuclear fusion. As a star’s gravity
battles the gas pressure inside a star, extremely fast
collisions of atoms will occur resulting in the creation
of heavier elemnts. Since stars in the main sequence
are composed of mostly hydrogen, a very long period
of time is spent fusing hydrogen atoms into helium
atoms. These stars will contract gradually due to the
loss of heat and light energy from fusion, but they
will still increase in temperature, density, and pressure Figure 2: The sun a main sequence star
at the core. When a star has fused most of its hydrogen
atoms into helium atoms inside its core, the star begins the next stage of its life.

Red Giant or Super Red Giant

For stars that are no bigger in mass than 1.5 times our sun, the next stage of life is the red
giant. A star like our sun will continue to contract under its own gravity causing the
heavier element, helium, to sink to the core of the star while a shell of hydrogen is
formed around the helium. The shell of hydrogen will fuse more hydrogen into helium.
When the temperature and pressure are high enough at the core of the star, helium atoms
begin fusing into carbon atoms. This will radiate a tremendous amount of energy which
 will push the outer layers of the star out. The outer layers become much cooler making
the star look red in color. This process can be
shown in Figure 3.

The star is now a red giant, and is a lot bigger than

when it was in the main sequence phase. Stars like
the sun can balloon out to as big as the orbit of
mars. When sun-like stars have burned most of its
helium into carbon, the core is so dense that gravity
cannot collapse the star any further.

For stars larger than 1.5 times the sun, the next
stage after the main sequence is the red super giant
stage. This stage is just like the red giant except
Figure 3: Red giant
that the outer layers of these stars balloon out to
much larger distances. The radius of a red super giant can be as large as seven times the
distance from the earth to the sun.

Whereas sun like stars stop fusing after there is no more carbon, stars bigger than 1.5
suns can continue to fuse their cores into even heavier elements. This fusing continues
because the gravity of these massive stars is so strong that their cores are able to collapse
even further. Once the core of a red super giant star is composed of mostly iron, it can no
longer fuse anymore elements. Red giants and red super giants that can no longer
perform nuclear fusion begin the last stage of their lives.

Death of a Star

The last stage that a star will go through is the death stage. There are three possible
outcomes for a star which will depend on its mass. As stated before, a star’s gravity can
no longer compress its core and perform nuclear fusion. Therefore, there is no nuclear
fuel for the star and it will begin to die off.

White Dwarf-Black Dwarf

For a star about the size of the sun, nuclear fusion stops when the core is composed of
mostly carbon. The outer layers will shed off and become a planetary nebula for new
stars, and the core will be left completely bare. The star is now a very small star called a
white dwarf. These objects are only a few thousand miles in diameter, but they are
 extremely dense. In comparison with the average density of the earth, a white dwarf’s
density would be 200,000 times greater. A white dwarf will just radiate its leftover
energy for billions years becoming cold and dark. When all the heat is gone, the star
becomes a dead star also known as a black dwarf.

Neutron Star
For a star that has a size between 1.5 and 3 times the mass of the sun, the core will
eventually become entirely composed of iron. Eventually the iron core collapses in only a
few seconds from the intense gravity. The repulsive electrical forces between the atoms’
nuclei will overcome the gravitational forces creating a massive explosion called a
supernova. A supernova can have the brightness of 100 million suns and sometimes can
outshine an entire galaxy in just a short period of time.

The energy from the supernova will blow away the outer layers of the star and cause the
electrons and protons at the core to combine into neutrons. This star is now called a
neutron star, and it has a diameter of only ten miles. Neutron stars are very dense, and are
very similar to black holes.

Black Hole
For very massive stars that are greater than 3 times the mass of the sun, they will go
through a similar process like neutron stars. The iron core will collapse in on itself and a
supernova will result. The outer layers will be
blown away resulting in a star that has an extremely
strong gravitational field and a density that cannot
be measured. Black holes have a gravitational field
so strong that not even light can escape it.
Therefore black holes cannot be seen directly in
space. Although, the accretion of matter and the
destruction of other stars by black holes can be seen
as in Figure 4. It is theorized that black holes distort
time and space around it. Black holes are one of the
mysteries of the universe and scientists still do not
know that much about them
Figure 4: Black hole destroying a star

Conclusion
In summary, stars go through a very long process that lasts many billions of years called
the star life cycle. They are born as protostars and spend most of their lives as main
sequence stars. Then depending on a star’s size, a star will either become a red giant or a
red super giant. Sun like stars will live the rest of their dying days as black dwarfs, where
as the more massive stars will become neutron stars or black holes. Stars come in all
different ages, colors, and sizes, and learning about them will help us understand more
about the universe.

Works Cited
The Life Cycle of a Star
http://www.telescope.org/pparc/res8.html

The Universe Today

http://www.telescope.org/pparc/res8.html

White Dwarfs
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/astronomy-facts/stars/white-dwarfs