Stellar Birth
The giant cloud of gas and dust where stars are born.
What is a nebula?
The stage where a star spends most of its life.
What is the main sequence?
The stage a medium-sized star becomes after the main sequence.
What is a red giant?
A super-dense stellar core made almost entirely of neutrons.
What is a neutron star?
Stars with low or medium mass end their lives as this object.
What is a white dwarf?
The stage where gravity pulls gas together but nuclear fusion has not started yet.
What is a protostar?
Our star is currently in this stage of its life cycle.
What is the main sequence?
The stage a massive star becomes after the main sequence.
What is a red supergiant?
An object with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
What is a black hole?
Massive stars usually end their life with this event.
What is a supernova?
The main element that fuels stars during most of their life.
What is hydrogen?
The property of a star that most determines its life cycle.
What is mass?
The outer layers of a dying medium-sized star form this colorful cloud.
What is a planetary nebula?
The final stage of a white dwarf after it cools for billions of years.
What is a black dwarf?
Massive stars can become either this or a black hole.
What is a neutron star?
The process that powers stars by combining hydrogen atoms into helium.
What is nuclear fusion?
Massive stars burn fuel ______ than smaller stars.
What is faster?
The extremely dense core left behind by a medium-sized star.
What is a white dwarf?
A rapidly spinning neutron star that emits beams of radiation.
What is a pulsar?
Stars with more mass generally have ______ lifespans.
What are shorter lifespans?
The force responsible for collapsing gas and dust to form stars.
What is gravity?
The diagram that plots stars’ brightness against their surface temperature, where main sequence stars are located along a diagonal band.
What is the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram?
When a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses, it causes this huge explosion.
What is a supernova?
The minimum mass required for a star to become a black hole after a supernova.
What is a very massive star (about 20+ solar masses)?
The life cycle path for a Sun-like star is: Nebula → Protostar → Main Sequence → ______ → Planetary Nebula → White Dwarf.
What is a red giant?