Red Giants, White Dwarfs, our Sun, Black Holes!!!

Stars are beautiful and miraculous things that scatter the night sky. These twinkling lights are what make us stop and look up on a clear night. Although they seem so small and simple, there is a lot that happens during the life of a star.

Let's start off by talking about red giants. A red giant by defenition is the remaining core or central region of a star that has run or "burnt out" of protons. This portion of the star is made up of alphas, which are helium atoms. Since the once lively star has run out of fuel, it starts to cool and contract. The outer layers fall inward and cause the star to heat up once again. This outer shell gets hot enough that it produces more energy for the star and the star begins to swell. Eventually it becomes giant and has a red glow to it, thus giving it the name Red Giant.

Now another form of a star is the white dwarf. This type of star is formed when a larger star at the end of its "nuclear" age explodes and leaves its remnants behind. The core of this once giant star gets extremely hot and as a result, forms a white dwarf star. These are the types of stars that we can see on a clear night. Our sun is a dwarf star, it is just a lot closer to Earth than all of the others.

Now for our sun, it is a dwarf star, formed millions and millions of years ago. The Sun is the largest object in our solar system, it makes up over 99.8% of the mass of our entire system. Just like any other star, the sun has many layers. They include the photosphere, chromosphere, and corona. Our sun is the most important star in all of the solar system.

So what happens when a star as big as the sun burns out? A black hole!! It's true, a black hole is simply the space where a star used to be. In the movies they are portrayed as time travelling tunnels and even space vacuums that suck up everything in sight. In order to create a black hole, a star as big as the sun or even larger, at the end of its "nuclear" age must undergo a supernova explosion. When this happens, well basically a big huge hole is left in space!

I think all of this is really interesting. I didn't realize how all of these things could be tied together in one way or another. For instance, a red giant forms a white dwarf, our sun is a white dwarf, and when a star as large as our sun explodes, it leaves a black hole! They are also very different from eachother as well. They all have different characteristics and affects on the solar system as a whole. Space is a wonderful and fascinating thing that will be studied for years and years to come.