Stellar Life Cycle of High and Low-Mass Stars

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A stars final state depends greatly on its mass and a star’s mass is determined at the beginning of its stellar lifecycle. Typically, black holes, neutron stars and type II supernovas only occur in the life cycle of high-mass stars while white dwarfs, planetary nebulae and type IA supernovas occur in the life cycle of low-mass stars. To determine how each of these remnants of stellar evolution are created all that is required is to follow the stellar life cycle of both low and high-mass stars. Beginning with a star’s birth, a star could either be low or high in mass. A star is born from a giant cloud of dust known as a nebula. The mass of the star is determined by the amount of matter present in the nebula. High-mass stars will have more matter present in the nebula for them to accrete in comparison to low-mass stars who have less mater in their nebula. Interestingly, while both stars may be of substantially different masses they share majority of the same stellar lifecycle phases. To elaborate, both low and high-mass stars become a protostar after gravity gradually forces the hydrogen gas that is available in their nebula together and begins to spin. (NASA, 2013). This spinning eventually causes the temperature of the protostars to reach 10 million K (or 15,000,000 degrees Celsius) whereby the protostar becomes hot enough for hydrogen fusion to operate efficiently. Both low and high-mass protostars then become main-sequence stars as the hydrogen fusion holds their gravitational contractions in stasis and they become stable. In this state, they glow and burn hydrogen in their core, converting it into helium through nuclear fusion. The stages of a stars stellar lifecycle that follow after the main sequence star phase depend predo... ... middle of paper ... ...om collapsing from neutron degeneracy pressure it will become a neutron star. These are detectable ____ If the mass of the leftover core of a high-mass star is greater than about 3 solar masses, the neutron degeneracy pressure can’t stop gravitational collapse and there is no known physical force capable of stopping this collapse. The core consequently collapses into a black hole. As you can now see, the remnants of stellar evaluation are determined predominantly by the mass of a star right from the beginning of its stellar lifecycle. Type IA supernovas, white dwarfs and planetary nebulae are stellar remnants of low-mass stars while Type II supernovas, neutron stars and black holes are the stellar remnants of high-mass stars. Given that also each of these stellar remnants are characteristically diverse, the way astronomers detect them is equivalently diverse.

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