Different Types of Stars

When you buy a star and start learning a bit about astronomy, you’ll discover a fascinating range of facts about star life cycles, including information on their age and behavior.

Supergiants are the largest and brightest stars around. They consume hydrogen at a rapid rate and often detonate as supernovae. Supergiants are so large, that if our Sun were a supergiant, it would extend close to Uranus.

Our own sun is a yellow star. In terms of the star life cycle, yellow stars live a relatively short time. It’s estimated our sun will live to be 10 billion years old. The sun is about halfway through its life cycle, which means it might have only 5 billion years of life left. Once it burns out and begins to cool, it will become a white dwarf.

White dwarfs are hot, dense and small, the cooling remains of stars in their last stages of life.

Black dwarfs are essentially cooled white dwarfs. All of the heat has been radiated into space. Scientists believe that our universe is so young, there are still no black dwarfs present.