Can the life cycle of a star be studied directly?

Basically, it is very difficult to pin down an individual star’s age. It has taken astronomers most of this century to piece together the life cycles of stars, simply because we cannot live long enough to follow a single star through its life cycle. Hundreds of star clusters are in fact known.

What is the one factor that determines the ultimate fate of a star?

The fundamental property of stars, which determines where a star will fall along the main sequence, its lifetime, rate of evolution, and ultimate fate — whether explosive or quiet, is a star’s mass.

How can you relate the life stages of a star to the life stages of human?

How does the life cycle of humans compare to the life cycle of a star? They both have stages where they are born and die which is in the main sequence and supernova and in a human they are born in a womb and die of old age.

How do scientists know the life cycle of a star?

A star’s life cycle is determined by its mass. The larger its mass, the shorter its life cycle. A star’s mass is determined by the amount of matter that is available in its nebula, the giant cloud of gas and dust from which it was born.

Who discovered the life cycle of a star?

physicist Ralph H. Fowler
During the 1920s, based on the principles of quantum mechanics, British physicist Ralph H. Fowler determined that, in contrast to the predictions of Russell, a white dwarf would become smaller as its mass increased.

What is the main factors in determining the fate of a star?

Is it true that a star gets lighter as time goes on?

Stars don’t stay the same throughout their life, and the Sun is no exception. Our Sun contains 99.8\% of the Solar System’s mass, but gets lighter every day. When enough time goes by, its changes will render Earth uninhabitable.

Are there differences in the life cycle of a star depending on the type of star?

The exact lifetime of a star depends very much on its size. Very large, massive stars burn their fuel much faster than smaller stars and may only last a few hundred thousand years. Smaller stars, however, will last for several billion years, because they burn their fuel much more slowly.

How do scientists know how far away a star is?

Astronomers estimate the distance of nearby objects in space by using a method called stellar parallax, or trigonometric parallax. Simply put, they measure a star’s apparent movement against the background of more distant stars as Earth revolves around the sun.

What happens to the mass of a star when it cools?

Eventually, only about 20\% of the star�s initial mass remains and the star spends the rest of its days cooling and shrinking until it is only a few thousand miles in diameter. It has become a white dwarf. White dwarfs are stable because the inward pull of gravity is balanced by the electrons in the core of the star repulsing each other.

What can the spectral type of a star be used to determine?

A) The spectral type of a star can be used to determine its surface temperature. B) The spectral type of a star can be used to determine its color. D) A star with spectral type F2 is hotter than a star with spectral type F3. E) All of the above are true. we use today and personally classified over 400,000 stars?

What is a star’s luminosity?

A star’s luminosity is the A) apparent brightness of the star in our sky. B) surface temperature of the star. C) lifetime of the star. D) total amount of energy that the star will radiate over its entire lifetime.

What is the difference between high-mass and low-mass stars?

A) Low-mass stars are cooler and less luminous than high-mass stars. B) Low-mass stars are hotter and more luminous than high-mass stars. C) Low-mass stars are cooler but more luminous than high-mass stars. D) Low-mass stars are hotter but less luminous than high-mass stars.