Sun what kind of star

These exploded as supernovae, producing fusing the lighter elements into heavier and heavier elements. Our Sun, then, contains the metal from previous generations of stars that went supernova. For the quick answer, the Sun is a Population I yellow dwarf star, in the main sequence. Why is the Sun yellow? If you saw it from space, it would actually look white. Sometimes, particularly massive white dwarfs those near the 1.

Stars more than eight times the mass of our Sun are destined to die in a titanic explosion called a supernova. A supernova is not merely a bigger nova. In a nova, only the star's surface explodes. In a supernova, the star's core collapses and then explodes. In massive stars, a complex series of nuclear reactions leads to the production of iron in the core.

Having achieved iron, the star has wrung all the energy it can out of nuclear fusion. The star no longer has any way to support its own mass, and the iron core collapses. In just a matter of seconds the core shrinks from roughly 5, miles across to just a dozen, and the temperature spikes billion degrees or more. The outer layers of the star initially begin to collapse along with the core, but rebound with the enormous release of energy and are thrown violently outward.

Supernovae release an almost unimaginable amount of energy. For a period of days to weeks, a supernova may outshine an entire galaxy. Likewise, all the naturally occurring elements and a rich array of subatomic particles are produced in these explosions. If the collapsing stellar core at the center of a supernova contains between about 1.

Neutron stars are incredibly dense. Because it contains so much mass packed into such a small volume, the gravity at the surface of a neutron star is immense. Like white dwarfs, if a neutron star forms in a multiple star system it can accrete gas by stripping it from nearby companions.

Neutron stars also have powerful magnetic fields that can accelerate atomic particles around its magnetic poles, producing powerful beams of radiation. Those beams sweep around like massive searchlights as the star rotates. If such a beam is oriented so that it periodically points toward Earth, we observe it as regular pulses of radiation that occur whenever the magnetic pole sweeps past our line of sight. In this case, the neutron star is known as a pulsar. If the collapsed stellar core is larger than three solar masses, it collapses completely to form a black hole: an infinitely dense object whose gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light.

Because photons are what our instruments are designed to see, black holes can only be detected indirectly. Indirect observations are possible because the gravitational field of a black hole is so powerful that any nearby material — often the outer layers of a companion star — is caught up and dragged in.

As matter spirals into a black hole, it forms a disk, called an accretion disk, that is heated to enormous temperatures, emitting copious quantities of X-rays and gamma-rays that indicate the presence of the underlying hidden companion. Black holes that are quiet and not actively "feeding" on accretion disks can also be detected indirectly by observing the motions of nearby stars. For example, astronomers observe the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way by watching as nearby stars whip around at astounding speeds only possible under the influence of an incredibly massive, but invisible object.

The dust and debris left behind by novae and supernovae, as well as by red giants puffing off their outer layers, eventually blend with the surrounding interstellar gas and dust, forming new nebulae.

The products created in the ends of the lives of stars enrich galaxies with heavy elements and chemical compounds. Eventually, those materials are recycled, providing the building blocks for new generations of stars and planetary systems. Next: What is the universe? Hint: you're included. What is an Exoplanet? Its equatorial diameter and its polar diameter differ by only 6.

The mean radius of the sun is , miles , kilometers , which makes its diameter about , miles 1. You could line up Earths across the face of the sun. The sun's circumference is about 2,, miles 4,, km. It may be the biggest thing in this neighborhood, but the sun is just average compared to other stars.

Betelgeuse , a red giant, is about times bigger than the sun and about 14, times brighter. Alex Young , if the sun were hollow, it would take about one million Earths to fill it. It's possible that the sun is even larger than previously thought. Xavier Jubier, an engineer and solar eclipse researcher, creates detailed models of solar and lunar eclipses to determine precisely where the moon's shadow would fall during the solar eclipse.

But when he matched actual photos and historical observations with the models, he found precise eclipse shapes only made sense if he scaled up the sun's radius by a few hundred kilometers. What are the different layers of the sun?

What is thermonuclear fusion? What is the composition of the sun? What kind of star is the sun and what is the composition of the sun?

Why does light at sunset appear red?