Hello, I am Atraeus, an astrological deity. I will be explaining the life cycle of a star!
The first stage is the Nebula stage. A star begins their journey as a large cloud of dust and gas.
dust and gas
protostar
Next, the dust and gas turns into a protostar.
This happens because of gas particles in the cloud running into each other, causing heat energy and eventually turning the particles into a hot clump of molecules.
Eventually, the star reaches hydrostatic equilibrium, after pushing away the surrounding gas and molecules.
Here, it's gravity compression is balanced by it's outward pressure giving it a solid shape. It is now a main sequence star.
This star is going to be spending a long time fusing hydrogen molecules and forming helium in it's core.
Once all of the hydrogen in the star's core is converted to helium, the core collapses on itself, causing the star to expand.
After a long, repetitive process of helium fusion, core shrinking and carbon fusing, iron appears in the core. Iron fusion absorbs energy, causing the core to collapse more.
Because our star is so massive, the implosion causes a supernova. In this event, most of the stars material is blown into space. but the core implodes rapidly into a neutron star or a black hole!
