Lifecycle of Stars
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Papa Fox
Posted:
Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:52 pm
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 5
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Can someone gove me a general rule of thumb as to which stars go supernove and which become red giants and then white dwarfs?
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Marc
Site Admin
Posted:
Sat Apr 21, 2007 10:11 am
Joined: 24 Oct 2003
Posts: 106
Location: Ireland
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Roughly, if a star has greater than 8 times the mass of our Sun it will go supernova (type II supernova). Stars like the Sun will become first red giants then white dwarfs, never going supernova. There is an exception to this however:
If the white dwarf happens to be part of a binary star system it may suck the mass of its companion star and if/when it grows large enough it then goes supernova (type I supernova).
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