Kyra_Jordan

Stars can have a low to high mass depending how their core takes it. Low to medium stars can be as big up too 8 times the mass of the sun, but they will eventually turn into white dwarfs. The stars have high masses when their hydrogen and helium are the only elements left and soon on dissapear with no elements to fuse. The engery in the inner part of the star soon begins to defuse, and the star collapses because because there is little pressure verses the gravitational pull. A cloud of gas will begin to form called a planetary nebula, and they look like little planets. After the star dies down, it's hot core is soon to be the only thing remaining, and this is known as a white dwarf. It is the same size of earth, but has the same exact mass of the sun. Weird right? They even begin to glow from the thermal energy being released, and within 20 billion years the star will cool down completely. Too bad the earth hasn't been created long enough to ever experience this beautiful piece of history. High mass star have a very different life-cycle than low-mass stars. For one, they have a much more dramatic death than the simple collapse of a low-mass star into a planetary nebula. These high-mass stars explode into a supernova, lighting up the galaxy with a brilliant flare. A supernova like this is what created our Solar System millions of years ago. The low-mass stars, however, dwindle down to a glowing white dwarf and take as much as 20 billion years to cool completley. Another difference is their actual life; a high-mass star dies more quickly because the large amounts of fuel they use decrease more rapidly. A low-mass star lives as long as its fuel last, which is usually a little bit longer.