 Rigel, viewed from a distance.
 By comparison, this is the Sun, and how it would appear when viewed from the same distance. Blue supergiants are supergiant stars (class I) of spectral type O. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1150x786, 47 KB) Summary Rigel, a blue supergiant star, viewed from a distance of 1 astronomical unit. ...
Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1150x786, 47 KB) Summary Rigel, a blue supergiant star, viewed from a distance of 1 astronomical unit. ...
Rigel (pronounced ) (β Orionis) is the brightest star in the constellation Orion and the seventh brightest star in the sky, with visual magnitude 0. ...
Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1150x784, 39 KB) Summary The Sun, viewed from a distance of 1 astronomical unit. ...
Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1150x784, 39 KB) Summary The Sun, viewed from a distance of 1 astronomical unit. ...
The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system. ...
Supergiants are the most massive stars. ...
The Pleiades, an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus A star is a massive, compact body of plasma in outer space that is currently producing or has produced energy through nuclear fusion. ...
In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based initially on photospheric temperature and its associated spectral characteristics, and subsequenly refined in terms of other characteristics. ...
They are extremely hot and bright, with surface temperatures of between 20,000 - 50,000°C. They typically have 10 to 50 solar masses on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, and can have radii up to about 25 solar radii. These rare and enigmatic stars are amongst the hottest, largest and brightest in the known Universe. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (usually referred to by the abbreviation H-R diagram or HRD, also known as a Colour-Magnitude (CM) diagram) shows the relationship between absolute magnitude, luminosity, classification, and surface temperature of stars. ...
The deepest visible-light image of the cosmos, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. ...
Because of their extreme masses they have relatively short lifespans of only 10 to 50 million years and are only observed in young cosmic structures such as open clusters, the arms of spiral galaxies, and in irregular galaxies. They are not observed in spiral galaxy cores, elliptical galaxies, or globular clusters, all of which are believed to be old. An open cluster is a group of stars (star cluster) that were born at the same time from a molecular cloud, and are still near to each other. ...
A spiral galaxy is a type of galaxy in the Hubble sequence which is characterized by the following physical properties: Spiral Galaxy M74 presents a face-on view of its spiral arms. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy in the Hubble sequence characterized by the following physical properties: The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4881 (the spherical glow at upper left) lies at the edge of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. ...
A globular cluster is a spherical bundle of stars (star cluster) that orbits a galaxy as a satellite. ...
The best known example is Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation of Orion. It has a mass of around 20 times that of the Sun and gives out more light than 60,000 suns added together. Despite their rarity and their short lives they are heavily represented among the stars visible to the naked eye; their inherent brightness trumps their scarcity. Rigel (pronounced ) (β Orionis) is the brightest star in the constellation Orion and the seventh brightest star in the sky, with visual magnitude 0. ...
Orion, a constellation often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation, perhaps the best-known in the sky. ...
The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system. ...
Blue supergiants represent a slower burning phase in the death of a massive star. Due to core nuclear reactions being slightly slower, the star contracts and since very similar energy is coming from a much smaller area (photosphere) then the star's surface becomes much hotter. Red supergiants can become blue supergiants if their nuclear reactions slow for whatever reason and the reverse can also occur. Red supergiants are supergiant stars of spectral type M. See also Blue supergiant Categories: Star stubs | Star types | Red supergiants ...
While the solar wind from a red supergiant is dense and slow, the wind from a blue supergiant is fast but sparse. When a red supergiant becomes a blue supergiant, by contracting, the faster wind it produces impacts the already emitted slow wind and causes the outflowing material to condense into a thin shell. Almost all blue supergiants observable have this shell of material surrounding them, suggesting that they all once were red supergiants.
As the star evolves, it may swing back and forth between red supergiant (slow, dense wind) and blue supergiant (fast, sparse wind) several times and give concentric faint shells around itself. In between the transition, the star can be yellow or white in color, such as the star Polaris, the North Star. Eventually the star is likely fated to go supernova although a very small number of stars in the 8-12 solar mass range will form supergiants but will proceed to become a very rare oxygen-neon white dwarf. It is not well understood how or why these special white dwarf stars form from a star which should, by right, end up a small supernova. It is theorised, though not quantitavely, that significant mass-loss occurs during the star's supergiant phase and places it below the threshold for supernova. Either a blue supergiant or a red supergiant can go supernova as the process of a supernova is not related to the state of the star's envelope. Polaris (α UMi / α Ursae Minoris / Alpha Ursae Minoris) is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor. ...
Multiwavelength X-ray image of the remnant of Keplers Supernova, SN 1604. ...
White dwarf Sirius-B in x-rays A white dwarf is an astronomical object which is produced when a low or medium mass star dies. ...
Since stars spend more time being red supergiants, we observe more red supergiants and most supernovae progenitors are red supergiants. It was assumed all supernovae were from red supergiants until Supernova 1987A forced revision as the progenitor was a B3 blue supergiant. 1987A supernova remnant near the center SN 1987A was a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. ...
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