Stars: those beautiful pinpricks of light in the night sky. Some of these apparent diamonds are vast red giants, while others are teaspoon sized. They are the centres of their respective systems(eg: the Sun being the centre of the Solar System), each system comprising millions of astronomical bodies. As you read this, you shall get a more accurate understanding of the types of stars.
The sun
The sun weighs about 1.9 x 10^30 kilograms. That's about 3,37,000 the mass of the earth. It is considered a middling star, despite its size. Its surface temperature is approximately 5700 Kelvin, which is 14 times hotter than the inside of an oven. It is truly phenomenal, but only a part of the cornucopia of stars in the universe.
Main series stars
The majority of stars in our night sky and in the universe comprises these stars. They vary greatly and can consist of anything from large blue stars to tiny red ones. The hotter stars have a smaller wavelength and the colder ones have a longer wavelength. This means blue stars are the hottest(upto 40000 Kelvin) while red stars are the coldest(upto 2500 Kelvin)
White dwarfs
When a star dies, it tends to collapse on itself. It stops turning hydrogen into helium and thus stops producing energy. However, it still shines brightly because of leftover heat. Such stars can be upto a 10^5 Kelvin hot, and a teaspoon of them can have a mass of upto 15 tonnes.
Neutron stars
These stars are made of neutrons. They are also formed when stars die but are the results of much bigger stars’ deaths. They are extremely heavy and hot, with a single teaspoon weighing upto 10^9 tonnes and temperatures ranging upto 10^6 Kelvin!
Supergiant stars
These stars are enormous in size. Supergiants can have masses from 10 to 70 solar masses. They vary greatly in radii, usually from 30 to 500, or even in excess of 1000 solar radii.
Stars are undeniably one of the most beautiful objects on God’s canvas. In any case, I’m pretty sure that we all love to look up at the stars in wonder.
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