03// the life of low-mass stars

hello! ^^

continuing with my previous entry about stars, I'll go into more detail about low-mass stars!

Low-mass stars are typically red or yellow and can be as small as 0.1 solar masses or as massive as 9 solar masses.

This is the process for the more massive, yellow stars:

They start off like every other star - clouds of H and He collapse under their gravity, forming a protostar, and then a star.

Inside the core of the star, hydrogen nuclei constantly fuse into helium nuclei, emitting energy that prevents the star from collapsing because of gravity.

When the star starts running out of hydrogen, the core becomes smaller and even hotter.

The remaining hydrogen nuclei start fusing even faster, and this causes the layers of the star to get bigger, and farther away from the core. When the layers are farther away, they start to get colder and turn red - the star becomes a red giant

The core continues to get smaller and hotter, and it gets hot enough for helium nuclei to fuse into carbon and oxygen. The star uses this new fuel until there's no more helium left, and the core collapses. 

The last bits of energy shoot out the outer layers away, leaving behind a nebula.

Red stars with less mass don't become red giants, because the helium core is not massive enough for helium nuclei to fuse together. The stars become white dwarfs after their hydrogen shell runs out.

Even smaller stars with around 0.1 solar mass are called red dwarfs, and they can't develop a helium core. Instead, they continue to fuse hydrogen until the whole star is made out of helium and slowly contracts.

I might have something wrong here, so again, feel free to correct me :3

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