Group 1 – Physical Science HUMSS 11 – C

Narrative Report about the life stages of a star

When we look up at the night sky, we can see stars shining and twinkling so brightly.
Same goes with our Sun (our very own star) that gleams in broad daylight. If we will think about
things on how those stars shine in the vast universe, we should know first how it was created
and how it works until it reaches its end.

According to study, the life of a star depends on its mass. The smaller the star, the
longer it will live. A star’s mass can be influenced by the matter that is available in the region
from it was born. The life stages of a star begins in the nebula, the giant cloud of gas and dust
Moments after the Big Bang, energy begins to condense into matter, protons and neutrons are
formed, and then the first element (hydrogen) is formed. Hundreds of millions of years later in
stellar nebulae, the hydrogen gas in the nebula is pulled together by gravity and it begins to
spin. As the gas spins faster, it heats up and becomes as a protostar.

Protostar looks like a star but its core is not yet hot enough for fusion to take place.
They are usually surrounded by dust so they are difficult to observe in the visible spectrum
because the light that they emit is being block. There are times that the protostar are not able
to continue its life up to the next stage. One of the factors is what you called a protostellar disk
spinning around the protostar. These disks probably slow the rotation of the protostar, and
sometimes coalesce into planetary systems. Another factor is due to its solar mass, stars above
about 200 solar masses generate power so furiously that gravity cannot contain their internal
pressure, it will eventually blow apart. Meanwhile, a protostar with less than 0.08 solar masses
never reaches the 10 million K temperature needed for efficient hydrogen fusion. These result
in “failed stars” called brown dwarfs which radiate mainly in the infrared and look deep red in
color. If the star is big enough to fuse hydrogen atoms into helium, it will enter the phase that
our Sun is in, called the main sequence phase.

Main sequence phase is the stage our Sun is at right now (Sun is considered as an
average star or a low mass star). In this phase, stars are powered by nuclear fusion in their core;
hydrogen in its core is converted into helium (H→ He). A star’s mass defines how a star comes
out of the main sequence phase of its life. Most massive stars will just explode as supernovae
while smallest red dwarf stars, astronomers think they’ll just shut off once they’ve used up all
their hydrogen, becoming white dwarfs. Our Sun has already been in its main sequence for 4.5
billion years, and will probably last another 7.5 billion years before it runs out of fuel. When the
hydrogen supply in the core begins to run out, and the star is no longer generating heat by
nuclear fusion, the core becomes unstable and contracts. The outer shell of the star, which is
still mostly hydrogen, starts to expand. As it expands, it cools and glows red. The star has now
reached the red giant phase.

A red giant is a dying star in one of the last stages of stellar evolution. Low mass star or
am average star like our Sun will turn into a red giant star, expand and engulf the inner planets,
possibly even Earth. As it expands, it cools and glows red. It is red because it is cooler than it
was in the main sequence star stage and it is a giant because the outer shell has expanded
outward. As medium sized stars exhaust their hydrogen content, they expand up to 100 times
their original size. The nuclear fusion reactions occurring within a red giant are H→ He and
He→ C. Just like what was mentioned earlier, the life stages of a star are determined by its size.
Average star, like our Sun, will turn into a planetary nebula while massive star will undergo into
a supernova explosion.

Planetary nebulas is a beautiful shell of diffuse gas ejected during the last stage (red
giant) of the life of a medium star after the helium has fused into carbon, the core of the red
giant collapses.As the core collapses, the outer layers of the star are expelled. About 10,000 of
these short-lived, glowing objects are estimated to exist in the Milky Way. Elements such as
helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, neon and smaller amounts of heavier elements are present.
Planetary nebulae play an important part in the chemical evolution of the galaxy, allowing these
elements to be returned to the interstellar medium. The remains of the carbon core of a red
giant evolve into a white dwarf star.

A white dwarf is a small, very dense, hot star that is made mostly of carbon. Stars like
our sun fuse hydrogen in their cores into helium. White dwarfs are stars that have burned up all
of the hydrogen they once used as nuclear fuel. Within the nebula, the hot core of the star
remains—crushed to high density by gravity—as a white dwarf. A white dwarf cools until it
becomes a black dwarf, which emits no energy. Because the universe's oldest stars are only 10
billion to 20 billion years old there are no known black dwarfs—yet.

The life cycle of a low mass star differs in the life cycle of a massive star after the red
giant phase. If an average star like or sun, will turn into a planetary nebula, massive stars will
undergo supernova explosion.

A massive star that runs out of hydrogen fuel in their core will collapse, and its outer
shell will begin to expand those results into a red supergiants. The famous star, Betelgeuse, is a
red supergiant star in the constellation Orion. A red supergiant is an aging giant star that has
consumed its core's supply of hydrogen fuel. Helium has accumulated in the core, and
hydrogen is now undergoing nuclear fusion in the outer shells. These shells then expand, and
the now cooler star takes on a red color. They are the largest known stars.

Supergiants are the element factories of our universe. The nuclear fusion reactions
occurring are H→ He, He→ C, C→ Ne, Ne→ O, O→ Si and Si→ Fe. Gravity continues to pull
carbon atoms together as the temperature increases and additional fusion processes proceed.
At the time core contains essentially just iron, fusion in the core ceases. This is because iron is
the most compact and stable of all the elements. It takes more energy to break up the iron
nucleus than that of any other element. Since energy is no longer being radiated from the core,
in less than a second, the star begins the final phase of gravitational collapse. The core
temperature rises to over 100 billion degrees as the iron atoms are crushed together. The
repulsive force between the nuclei overcomes the force of gravity, and the core recoils out
from the heart of the star in a shock wave, which we see as a supernova explosion.

Supernovae according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is the

The supernova explosion could result into two outcomes, if the remnant of the
explosion is 1.4 to about 3 times as massive as our Sun, it will become a neutron star. Neutron
stars are created when giant stars die in supernovas and their cores collapse, with the protons
and electrons essentially melting into each other to form neutrons. A neutron star is a very
small, super-dense star that is composed mostly of tightly packed neutrons. A rapidly spinning
neutron star is known as a pulsar. Like normal stars, two neutron stars can orbit one another. If
they are close enough, they can even spiral inwards ther doom in an intense phenomena
known as kilonova.

Meanwhile, the core of a massive star that has more than roughly 3 times the mass of
our Sun after the explosion will do something quite different. The force of gravity overcomes
the nuclear forces which keep protons and neutrons from combining. The core is thus
swallowed by its own gravity. It has now become a black hole which readily attracts any matter
and energy that comes near it. Its gravitational field does not let anything escape from it – not
even light. That’s how the life of a star works; it takes up to billions of years to form as well as
to end.