Xaria Ward

Name: ____________________
Title/Topic: The Life Cycle of Stars 11/15/22
Date: _____________________
Astronomy
Subject: ___________________
8
Period: ____________________
ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
• How does a stars characteristics change over the course of its life?
• How does the fuel source lead to changes in the size of a star?

Study Questions Student Notes

⚫ A star is a mass of _____________

incandescent (so hot it glows) gas.
1. What is a star?

2. Stellar Life Cycle The Birth of a Star

Nebula
____________—stars start out as a nebula, a cloud of dust and gas in space.
contract
An outside force causes the nebula to start to ____________. As it contracts the
a. Fusion in Action density increases and gravitational forces cause the nebula to continue to shrink
and it starts to spin. The concentrated area in the center of the nebula forms a
protostar
______________.

Why does everything start to flatten out and stretch? Physics! It’s the same idea
pizza
as a ________ dough
________ toss
______.

Pressure continues to build in the center of the protostar. As the pressure

builds the temperature rises. When the temperature reaches 10,000,000C
nuclear
____________ fusion
________ begins and the star turns on. That’s 18,000,032 F !
⚫ Stars converts hydrogen to helium by a process called _________
fusion

(combination of nuclei of 2 small atoms to form one larger nucleus)

⚫ H + H = He (2 Hydrogen = 1 Helium)
⚫ There are two opposing forces:
⚫ ________
gravity trying to make the star collapse in on itself;
⚫ The __________
outward force
_______ (pressure) of the fusion reactions
In the life time of a star, the two forces balance each other out and the star
remains the same size.
Main Sequence Star
stable
Once the star is “__________”, with a balance of fusion and gravity, it is said to
3. Main Sequence

be in the main sequence of the HR diagram

This is the longest stage of star’s life (adulthood)
Our sun is currently a main sequence star
 ____
90 % of stars are main sequence stars
4. Which path?

⚫ When a nebula first starts to break down, it’s mass will determine the
low
stars future path. If the mass is “____” it will have one life, if the mass is
high
“_____” it will have a different life.

5. Low mass stars Leaving the Main Sequence—The hydrogen has almost all fused into helium.
increase
Star starts to contract, causing the temperature to _________ and the star is
carbon
now able to fuse helium into _________. This increases the force of fusion.

Giant Star – hydrogen runs out, this causes the star to get brighter and
Red _____
expand
5 billion years from now…the sun will turn into a
This will be the fate of our sun __
Mars
Red Giant and expand outwards to the orbit of _______!

What happens when there isn’t anything left to fuse?

Star stops fusion so gravity causes the star to collapse. The hot dense core is left
glowing
behind. The star is still _________ due to the extreme temperature, not
because it is still generating light.
6. The end for low mass stars
collapses
When the star __________ from this giant size, its outside layers of the star are
decimated in such a way that a shell of diffused gases known as a planetary
nebula is created.

Dwarf – Red Giant stops fusing elements, the giant collapses inward
White ______
glow
The dwarf gives off enough heat to “_____” for a billion years
7. High mass stars
Black
_______ Dwarf – White dwarf eventually cools and becomes dark

High Mass Stars

Leaving the Main Sequence – The process is the same as for low mass stars.
hydrogen has run out, and the star now begins to fuse _________
_________ helium into carbon.

Red ____________—This
_____ Supegiants stage is similar to the red giant stage but the stars
that are at least 100 times the size of the sun.

⚫ The star is out of “_____”

fuel it isn’t hot enough to fuse heavier elements
Supernovas
together, and as such collapses in on itself. ______________—a giant
heavier
explosion that forms as a supergiant collapses. All elements ________
than iron are fused together during a supernova explosion.
⚫ Supernovas are so bright they can ________
outshine entire galaxies. In 1054
there are records from Chinese astronomers that they saw a supernova
3 weeks.
explosion during the day for ___
⚫ All of the elements of the periodic table (92) in the universe are ______
forged
in the core of stars!
⚫ When the star supernovas, it _______
expels these elements out into space.
⚫ If you happen to have had that thought “aren’t we made of elements?” –
you are right, we are!
 ⚫ So yes that means.…you and everyone you know are literally made of
“____
star _____”
dust

8. The end for a high mass

star
⚫ The core that remains after a supernova explosion is an extremely dense
ball of neutrons. If its mass does not exceed _____
three solar masses it will
remain a neutron star. If it’s mass does ________
exceed three solar masses, it
will evolve into a black hole.

Neutron Stars—a very dense ball of neutrons left over after a supernova
explosion. These are only about 30 km in diameter and a _______
teaspoon of matter
from a neutron star would weigh _____
100 million tons on Earth.

______
Black _____—when
hole stars are too massive, to form a neutron star they
contract with an even greater force which crushes the dense core of the star.
There is so much _______
gravity in a black hole that even ________
light cannot escape
from it.
9. The H-R Diagram The H-R Diagram
⚫ A plot of stars on a graph that compares absolute magnitude (luminosity)
with the temperature of stars
⚫ Different temperatures can have different colors
⚫ This is essentially a graph of temperature on the horizontal axis while on
the vertical axis we can put the __________
abosolute __________
magnitude or the
_________ compared with
luminosity
the Sun.
⚫ Sun = 1 on the chart

Summary:
Explain the relationship between luminosity and temperature for main sequence stars on the H-R Diagram
The luminosity and temperature of a main-sequence star are set by its mass.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________
More massive means brighter and hotter. A ten solar mass star has about ten times the sun's supply of nuclear energy. Its luminosity is 3000 times that of the sun.

Explain the relationship between the volume of a star and it’s temperature
The hotter a surface is, the more light it produces. The bigger a star is, the more surface it has. When these relationships
________________________________________________________________________________________________
are combined, two stars at the same temperature can be vastly different in brightness because of their sizes.
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Using the density equation (D = M/V), explain why a black hole is formed when a Supergiant star collapses?
Once a star has no fuel left to burn, it can no longer support its mass and collapses. If the mass of the star was large enough
________________________________________________________________________________________________
it will collapse into an object with an immense gravitational
________________________________________________________________________________________________
pull from which nothing, not even light, can escape – a black hole.
________________________________________________________________________________________________