main sequence
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Globular Clusters: The Untold Story
Meet Messier 13: my sentimental favorite globular cluster. For more than a decade now, one of my favorite things has been to set up my telescopes at astronomy outreach events and show people the night sky. I have two telescopes…
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How Low-Mass Stars Die
When we talk about star death, we’re not really talking about death. We’re talking about the end of a functioning star. Astronomers tend to personify cosmic objects like stars, saying that they are born and die, when it’s more like…
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Story of a Star Cluster
Meet M13, one of my favorite globular star clusters. M13, also known as Messier 13 or the Hercules Cluster, is found — surprise surprise — in the constellation Hercules in the northern hemisphere. The really cool thing about star clusters…
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What Happens in an Expanding Star’s Core?
Depending on their mass, stars can remain stable for millions and even billions of years. The most massive stars live for “only” about 10 million years, but models predict that the least massive live for much longer — longer than…
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The Story of a Newborn Star
What happens when a star is born? A couple of posts ago, I explained how a protostar forms out of a dense cloud core within the interstellar medium. But…wait. What exactly is a protostar again? A protostar forms when one…
