Abstract
Stars live for millions, billions and even hundreds of billions of years, and so you may be thinking how on Earth can we know anything about how a star dies? After all, our planet is only 4.5 billion years old and we have been studying astronomy for about the last 10,000 years. Well, fortunately for us, it is nevertheless possible to observe the many disparate ways in which a star can end its life.
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Notes
- 1.
Current theories predict that low-mass M-type stars will stay on the main sequence for trillions of years!
- 2.
In stars that are hotter and have a higher mass than the Sun, the chain of reactions that leads to hydrogen fusion is called the CNO cycle, where C, N and O stands for carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, respectively. The amount of energy produced in this reaction is exactly the same as that produced by the proton-proton reaction discussed earlier, but it occurs at a much more rapid rate.
- 3.
Recent research suggests it may have a radius ranging from 650 to 1,420 times that of the Sun, so choosing a figure of 1,000 seems reasonable.
- 4.
On one occasion, it remained at minimum magnitude for 10 years!
- 5.
The name “planetary nebulae” was first applied to these objects by Herschel, who thought that the nebula looked like Jupiter when seen in a telescope.
- 6.
See Appendix 1 for a full explanation of degeneracy.
- 7.
Recent observations have detected a star (V4334 Sagittarii) that was well on its way to being a white dwarf when it underwent a final helium flash, grew to red giant size once again, and is now ejecting more gas. Another star that has shown a similar behavior is V605 Aquilae.
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Inglis, M. (2015). Star Death: White Dwarfs & Planetary Nebulae. In: Astrophysics Is Easy!. The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11644-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11644-0_11
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