The Life Journey of a Star
A star begins its journey of life as a nebula, after its formation into a nebula it evolves into a star. As it continues down its journey of life the star transforms itself into a red giant, then takes the later stages of a red and a white dwarf. After several different transformations the star proceeds to its death as a supernova.
The star’s life process begins as a nebula, a cloud of hydrogen gas and dust in space. Even though nebulas are the birthplaces of stars, there are several different types of nebulas, which are the Emission Nebula, Reflection Nebula, Dark Nebula, and the Planetary Nebula. Emission Nebulas are clouds of ionized gas emitting light of various colors. Only massive hot stars can release enough energy to ionize a significant part of a cloud. Emission Nebulas also glow brightly because the gas in it is from the stars that already formed within it. Clouds of interstellar which reflect light of a nearby star or stars make up Reflection Nebulas. Although energy from a nearby star is not ample enough to ionize the gas of the nebula to create an emission nebula, it is sufficient enough to make the dust in the cloud visible. Starlight is what makes the grains of dust in a visible in a reflection nebula. For example, the Pleiades Cluster is a typical example of a reflection nebula. A Dark Nebula is a group of interstellar clouds that are so dense that the light it gives off is from an emission nebula. Its obscurities are only visible by using radio waves. Planetary Nebulas commonly known as a stellar-remnant is an emission nebula consisting of an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas ejected during the asymptotic giant branch period during a stars life. The outer layers of a star that are lost when it changes from a red giant to a white dwarf are also referred to as the Planetary Nebula.
A red giant is a luminous giant star in the late process of stellar evolution. Red giants are stars that have exhausted the supply of...