image credit: ESO/S. Steinhöfel; image source; larger image

Star Life Cycle

Our Sun is typical low-mass star in the galaxy, in the prime of its life, steadily fusing hydrogen as it will do for another five billion years. For an overview of our Sun's and other stars' lives, check out Star Life Cycle. For more details, see Main Sequence Stars and Sol.

You have probably heard that the Sun will one day expand and consume the Earth.  In fact, the Sun might even expand to the orbit of Mars. Read what happens when stars leave the main sequence here.

Login to Comment on this Item

Build Your Own Star

See how the initial mass and composition of a new star will determine that star's fate by Building Your Own Star. Simply enter your desired parameters and watch as the star grows from a cloud of gas and dust and changes over time, condensing billions of years into a minute.

Search:

Advanced Search

Browse Physics To Go by Topic.

image credit: NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI), R. Ciardullo (Penn State), and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI); image source; larger image

Stellar Evolution

When the Sun reaches the end of its life, its outer layers will drift into space, an intricate cloud illuminated by its hot, dense core, as in this false-color image of a planetary nebula and white dwarf. For more details, see this page on the death of solar-mass stars.

How a star lives and dies depends upon its mass. For an overview of the lifetime of different types of stars, see The Life and Death of Stars. You should also see the Interactive Guide to Stellar Evolution and, for very thorough explanations, the Stellar Evolution pages from the Chandra website.

Death Star: A Bad Day In the Milky Way

Another possible fate for especially massive stars is to explode in a hypernova, causing a gamma-ray burst. To learn about the effect a gamma-ray burst would have on Earth, check out Death Star: A Bad Day In the Milky Way.