Star Formation Essay
Also, the star reaches levels to where it can now have helium converted to carbon. This energy begins to drastically increase the size of the star, resulting in the creation of a red giant. Oddly enough, the color red, which is associated with hot, isn’t really in this case. The color of the star is a result of the surface temperature decreasing causing wavelengths to emit a red color, while the hotter the star is the color would be more blue. Stars don 't spend much of their life in this stage. They only spend about one billion years in this stage, because helium burns quickly. As the helium runs out and the fusion stops, the star expands one more time. Until, it then shrinks again, and the helium flares up, causing the outer layers of the star to drift off in massive clouds of gas and dust. Those massive clouds are known as planetary nebulae. The smaller stars however, don’t result in planetary nebulae, rather they can become white dwarfs. Also, the more larger stars result in becoming a supernova or a black …show more content…
It starts as a protoplanetary nebula, the stage at which the star starts to shed its outer layers. A planetary nebula is constructed during the final stages of a stars life, but the star had to be born with a solar mass between one and eight masses. The clouds of gas and dust glow due to the fact that it was heated by the ultraviolet radiation that was produced from when the star was dying, Interesting fact, in 1764, Charles Messier, discovered the first planetary nebula, which was called Dumbbell Nebula. Another result after the red giant can be, a white dwarf. When the star runs out of fuel, instead of shedding its outer layers, it collapses on itself creating a white dwarf. These white dwarfs are about the mass of the sun, while only being the size of the radius of earth. Because of that, they are very dense. The electrons are crushed together creating what is called “degenerate matter.” Basically, the smaller the white dwarf is then the more massive, more dense, it will be. Since they shed a lot of mass after the red giant phase, making it impossible for them to grow 1.4 times the size of the