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The Life Cycle of a Star

The Life Cycle of a Star. Nebula. Giant clouds of gas and dust The birthplace of stars!. Eagle Nebula: 9.5 Light Years Tall!. http://hubblesite.org/gallery/tours/tour-m16/. Creation of a Star.

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The Life Cycle of a Star

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  1. The Life Cycle of a Star

  2. Nebula • Giant clouds of gas and dust • The birthplace of stars!

  3. Eagle Nebula: 9.5 Light Years Tall! http://hubblesite.org/gallery/tours/tour-m16/

  4. Creation of a Star • Hydrogen gas is pulled together by gravity. It begins to spin, heats up, and becomes a star.

  5. Cool Fact: Hydrogen in its core is converted into helium– this creates massive amounts of heat and light energy (this is called nuclear fusion)

  6. A star will take one of two paths during its lifetime…

  7. Average Stars (such as our sun) • Lifetime: Approximately 9 billion years as a main sequence star

  8.  Hydrogen runs out. The outer layers of the star cool and expand outward • Red Giant – cool, large, red star • Cool Fact: When this happens to our Sun, scientists hypothesize that it will extend out as far as the Earth or even Mars.

  9.  The core of the Red Giant collapses and becomes a White Dwarf. The outer layers of the star drift away. • White Dwarf – Small, dense star • Cool Fact: Typically, a white dwarf has a radius equal to about 0.01 times that of the Sun, but it has a mass roughly equal to the Sun's. This gives a white dwarf a density about 1 million times that of water!

  10. When the white dwarf runs out of energy, it eventually cools to become a black dwarf • Black Dwarf – small, dead star

  11. Path #2: Massive Stars! • Lifetime = approximately 10 million years • Size = 10-1000 times the size of the Sun!

  12. Hydrogen runs out. The outer layers of the star cool and expand outward. • Red Super Giant – Very large, cool, red star

  13. They continue to burn for a time and expand to an even larger volume.

  14. Light Echoes From a Red SupergiantNASA Photo

  15. When a star dies, it explodes into a radioactive cloud. • Supernova =extremely bright explosion (brighter than an entire galaxy)! • Kepler’s Supernova

  16. Crab Nebula: The remains of a supernova

  17. Cassiopeia A (Cas A, for short), the youngest supernova remnant in the Milky Way.

  18. What is left after the Supernova is Neutron Star. • Neutron Star/Pulsar: When a Neutron Star begins to rotate, it is called a Pulsar. • Cool Fact: According to astronomer and author Frank Shu, "A sugar cube of neutron-star stuff on Earth would weigh as much as all of humanity!" Neutron stars can be observed as pulsars.

  19. The core of a more massive star will collapse and create a black hole. • Gravity becomes so strong not even light can escape (which is why it’s called a “black hole”) • Video: Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole, which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background

  20. Cool Picture: This is a simulated view of a black hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. • http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BH_LMC.png

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