Star Death
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Stellar Evolution Demystified
Whaddya know…after what seems like a geological age, we’re finally done with stellar evolution! And we’ve covered a truly ridiculous amount of information. We’ve covered a star’s relatively gentle, humble beginnings within the collapsing cores of giant molecular clouds (or…
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What Exactly are Supernovae?
This is one topic I bet you guys have been looking forward to since I first started posting about stellar evolution. Well, I won’t disappoint you! In my last post, we covered how a massive star gets to the point…
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How Massive Stars Die
When people think of star death, they most often think of supernovae (plural for supernova). So why haven’t I spent the past bunch of posts on star death talking about them? Because supernovae are not actually the most common fate…
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What About Binary Systems?
In the constellation of Perseus, there is a star named Algol that exists in a binary system. The binary consists of two stars: a massive main-sequence star and a less massive giant. According to what we’ve explored so far…that doesn’t…
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What are White Dwarfs?
Now that we’re finally talking about white dwarfs, we’re getting into the really cool stuff. In my last post, we explored planetary nebulae, and we left off with a question: where does the fast wind that forms planetary nebulae come…
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What are Planetary Nebulae?
Meet the planetary nebula, one of the universe’s most gorgeous phenomena. If you’ve ever looked through a telescope, you may have seen one of these before. Through a small telescope, one might look like a little planet — hence the…
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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…
