EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -A red giant star is the later stage of a star whose mass is less than or equal to about 8 times the Sun’s mass. Such stars including our Sun, swell into a massive red giant star.

Detailed explanation-2: -A white dwarf is the last stage of the life cycle for a star like the sun. It is a small incredibly hot star. They have the same mass as before but only 1% of the diameter meaning they are enormously dense. White dwarfs cool and fade over the course of several billion years.

Detailed explanation-3: -To become a red giant, a particular star must have between half our sun’s mass, and eight times our times our sun’s mass. Astronomers call such stars low-or intermediate-mass stars. So you can see that our sun is one of the stars that will inevitably, someday, become a red giant.

Detailed explanation-4: -The largest known red supergiant is thought to be VY Canis Majoris, measuring about 1800 times the size of the Sun. Imagine if the Sun extended out to the orbit of Saturn.

Detailed explanation-5: -A red giant is a star that has exhausted the supply of hydrogen in its core and has begun thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen in a shell surrounding the core. They have radii tens to hundreds of times larger than that of the Sun. However, their outer envelope is lower in temperature, giving them a yellowish-orange hue.