Life Cycle of Stars

Stars are massive balls of fire that radiate immense amounts of heat and light into the universe. The star, like fireflies illuminating a summer night, is a fixed bright dot that you can see in an infinite velveteen sky.

Stars have been there for billions of years, and it takes millions of years for them to create. A star’s life begins as a protostar within massive molecular clouds of dust and gas; these molecular clouds are referred to as nebulae or dark nebulae, depending on their colour.

These interstellar nurseries are where stars begin their lives as protostars or hot cores (formed by the accumulation and collapse of dust and gas) and progress through the stages of their creation.

Seven Main Stages of a Star

Stars are made up of a variety of masses, and the mass of the star influences how brightly it will light and how quickly it will die. Supernovae, neutron stars, and black holes are formed when massive stars explode, whereas typical stars, such as the sun, die as a white dwarf surrounded by a fading planetary nebula as they reach the end of their lives. The same 7-stage cycle governs all stars, regardless of their size. They begin as a gas cloud and end as a star remnant, with the exception of black holes.

Giant Gas Cloud

A massive cloud of gas is responsible for the formation of a star. Temperatures in the cloud are sufficiently low to allow for the production of molecules. It is possible to see a star in this period of life in the Orion cloud complex, which is located in the Orion system.

Protostar

A large amount of heat energy is produced when gas particles in a molecular cloud collide with one another. This culminates in the production of a heated clump of molecules known as the Protostar, which is formed as a result of the process. The formation of Protostars can be observed via infrared vision because the Protostars are warmer than the other materials in the molecular cloud, making it possible to witness the process. Depending on the size of the molecular cloud, a number of Protostars can arise in a single cloud.

T-Tauri Phase  

T-Tauri Phase   In order for nuclear fusion to take place at the core of the Tauri star, the star’s average temperature must be higher. Approximately 100 million years pass before the T-Tauri star enters the Main sequence phase of development, which is the most protracted phase of development available.

Main Sequence

Main sequence phase refers to the step in the development process at which the core temperature achieves the temperature required for fusion to begin. The protons of hydrogen are transformed into atoms of helium during this process of fusion. As a result, the core of a main-sequence star releases an enormous amount of energy since this reaction is exothermic, meaning that it produces more heat than it requires.

Red Giant

During the course of its life at its core, a star transforms hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. At some point, the hydrogen fuel is depleted and the internal reaction comes to an abrupt halt. The gravitational pull of a star causes it to compress inward, causing it to grow if the reactions in the core do not occur. As it grows in size, the star first becomes a subgiant star, and then a red giant, before finally exploding. Due to the fact that red giants have cooler surfaces than main-sequence stars, they look red rather than yellow as viewed from Earth.

The Fusion of Heavier Elements

As the star grows in size, the helium molecules in its core fuse together. The energy released during this reaction keeps the core from collapsing. Once the helium fusion process is completed, the core shrinks and begins fusing carbon. This technique is repeated until iron is discovered at the centre. The iron fusion reaction absorbs energy, causing the core to collapse as a result of the reaction. The implosion of massive stars results in the formation of supernovae, whereas smaller stars such as the sun compress and become white dwarfs.

Supernovae and Planetary Nebulae

However, although most of the star’s mass is blasted away into space, the centre implodes, creating either a neutron star or a singularity known as a black hole as a result. The cores of less massive stars do not explode; instead, they compress into a small, burning star known as a white dwarf, with the outer material drifting away. When stars are smaller than the sun, they don’t have enough mass to burn with anything other than a red glow during the main sequence of their lives. These red dwarves are tough to distinguish from one another. However, it is possible that these are the most common stars that can continue to burn for trillions of years.

Conclusion

As we all know, the development of stars takes millions of years, if not billions of years. From birth to death, as well as all of the stages in between, a star’s life cycle takes millions of years, which is why we see no changes in their appearance, as human life is a fraction of a fraction of a blink of an eye in comparison to these titans’ lives.

A star is not a single entity in the cosmos; there are millions or billions of them distributed throughout the universe.

Those were the seven major stages of a star’s life cycle, as described above. A star is one of the most beautiful and lyrical objects in all of creation, no matter how big or small, how young or old they are.  Despite the fact that there aren’t many particles, there are enough of them for gravity to progressively pull the particles together. It is possible for the particles to mix in order to form massive objects, and if the objects become really large, you will be left with a newly formed star.