13 The Death of Stars:

Recycling
 1. Introduction
The more massive a star is the shorter it stays on the main sequence.
Massive stars stay on the main sequence for a few million years. Our
star has been on the main sequence for about 5 bY and will stay on it
for 5 bY more. Red dwarfs can stay on the main sequence for trillions of
years!
Lightweight stars (less than 8-10 M☉ ), including the Sun, will end up as
planetary nebulae with a white dwarf at the center.
2. The Death of the Sun
Here we discuss the evolution of the Sun as an example of a single
(solitary), isolated star with mass less than 8-10M☉ .
More massive stars will evolve faster, and less massive stars will evolve
more slowly.
2a Red Giants
When the hydrogen at the core of a star runs out (after 10 bY for the
Sun), the pressure at the star’s core drops. Gravity there pulls the
helium core and its surrounding hydrogen shell inward, and half of the
gravitation potential energy is converted to heat. Hydrogen begins to
burn in the shell around the helium core.
The energy released from the shell causes
the outer layers to expand by 10 times or
more. The Sun’s radius at this stage will be
30% of the Earth’s orbit (60 times larger).
The solar surface will cool down to about
4000 K, and it will look red. Such a star is
called a red giant. Red giants appear at the
upper-right part of the HR diagram. The
Sun will be a red giant for about 1 bY.
Red giants can be seen from large
distances. A few among the brightest stars
in the sky are red giants. Arcturus in Boötes
and Aldebaran in Taurus are good examples
of red giants.
The contracting core becomes hot enough
to fuse helium into carbon and oxygen if the
star’s mass is 0.45 M☉ or more. For the
Sun, this will take only 0.1 bY. The star now
has a core of carbon and oxygen,
surrounded by shells of fusing helium and
hydrogen. The star’s surface gets slightly hotter and fainter.

The core is not hot enough to fuse carbon.

Thus, the star contracts again releasing
gravitational potential energy as heat,
causing the helium and hydrogen shells to
fuse even faster. Eventually, the outer layers
expand further, making the star even larger
and cooler red giant (3000 K).
2. The Death of the Sun
2b Planetary Nebulae
In the second phase of a red giant, the star’s helium burning
shell is unstable. It undergoes pulses every 104 −105 years.
These pulses produce bursts of energy that expand the star’s
outer layer. The gas layers keep drifting outwardly until they
leave the star vicinity. The radiation from the central star ionizes
the gas layers, making them glow. We have now a dense star
core and a glowing planetary nebula.
The best known planetary nebula is the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It
can be seen with a medium telescope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iauIP8swfBY (Contains music!)
Cat’s Eye Nebula Ring Nebula
Helix Nebula
 2. The Death of the Sun

2b Planetary Nebulae
The Helix nebula is so close to us. It has the same angular size as the
full moon.
We found about 1000 planetary nebula in the milky way. The masses of
each is about 0.20 M☉ .
Planetary nebulae looked like the planet Uranus when first observed
and hence the name.
 2. The Death of the Sun
2b Planetary Nebulae
At the center of a planetary nebula lies the exposed blue hot stellar
core, with surface temperature of 105 K. It is sometimes called the
central star of a planetary nebula.
Stars do not lose mass symmetrically. Sometimes, the mass ejecting
star is in a binary and its motion affects the direction of mass loss.
For our star, the planetary nebula will last for about 50,000 y. The
nebula would then be so spread and fade away.
Egg Nebula
2. The Death of the Sun
2c White Dwarfs
Stars with mass up to 8 M☉ (or 10 M☉ ) loose most of their mass
through winds and planetary nebula ejections.
The remaining mass is less than 1.4 M☉ . For our Sun, the remaining
mass will be 0.6 M☉ , after 7 bY.
When the central star of a planetary nebula contracts to be the size of
the Earth (100 times smaller than the progenitor star), a new kind of
pressure that puts an end to the contraction appears: electron
degeneracy pressure.
This “electron degeneracy pressure” is the consequence of processes that can be understood only with
quantum physics. It comes from the resistance of electrons to being packed too closely together; they
become “degenerate” (indistinguishable from each other in certain respects), and end up differing mainly in
their energy levels.
2. The Death of the Sun
2c White Dwarfs
The resulting object is a special type of “stars”; a white dwarf. A white
dwarf is 106 times denser than a star. A single teaspoon of a white
dwarf weighs 5 tons!
The maximum mass of a white dwarf is 1.4 M☉ . Beyond this mass limit
(called the Chandrasekhar limit), “chan-dra-sek-har” the gravitational
pressure would overcome the degeneracy pressure.
White dwarfs are very faint and thus hard to find. The most well-known
white dwarf is Sirius B.
Visible X-ray
Sirius
2. The Death of the Sun
2c White Dwarfs
White dwarfs do not generate energy. They radiate their energy at birth
over billions of years and become cold and dim. Sometimes, cold white
dwarfs are called black dwarfs. The Sun will end up as a black dwarf if it
has enough time.
2. The Death of the Sun

2d Summary of the Sun’s

_ Evolution
2. The Death of the Sun
2e Binary Stars and Novae
Most stars exist in binary systems can exchange matter. That makes
their evolution radically different from that of isolated stars.
Every member of the binary is surrounded by its own Roche lobe,
where its gravity dominates.
Consider two main sequence stars. When one of them becomes a red
giant, it fills its Roche lobe and matter can flow to the other star, adding
mass to it. The added mass can modify the recipient star drastically.