![]() They’re not the most massive Betelgeuse, for example, only has about 20 times the mass of the Sun. The biggest stars in the Universe are the red supergiants. This is why they appear very bright, but still have a red color. They start out as regular stars, but they grow to such an enormous size that their heat is spread out across a much larger surface area. After a few hundred million years, it will puff its outer layers and become a white dwarf star. When our Sun becomes a red giant, it will expand out to encompass the orbit of the Earth. But at the end of their lives, when they have used up all their hydrogen fuel, these medium-sized stars will puff out much bigger than their original size – these are red giants. Stars like our Sun spend most of their lives as main sequence stars with a surface temperature that’s much hotter than a red star. It’s believed that a red dwarf star could survive for 10 trillion years. Red dwarfs use their hydrogen fuel slowly and so they last a very long time. Even the largest red dwarf only has about 10% of the Sun’s luminosity. In fact, a red dwarf emits 1/10,000th the energy. ![]() Red dwarfs generate much less energy than a larger star like our Sun. This is where atoms of hydrogen are fused into atoms of helium this process releases lots and lots of heat. Even a star with this little mass has enough temperature and pressure at its core to carry out nuclear fusion. The smallest red dwarf stars can be 7.5% the mass of our Sun, and be as large as about half the mass of the Sun. These are actually the most common stars in the Universe. The first kind of red stars are red dwarfs. Just for comparison, the Sun’s surface temperature is about 6,000 Kelvin and emits yellow/white light. ![]() A star that emits mostly red light will have a surface temperature of about 3,500 Kelvin. As I mentioned above, the color of a star comes from its surface temperature. Let’s take a look at the different kids of red stars that are out there in the Universe.įirst, let’s talk about temperature. Red stars come in one color, but many different shapes and sizes. The hottest stars are blue, cooler stars are white and yellow, and the coolest stars of all are red. The color of a star comes from the temperature of its surface. ![]()
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