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2021-06-17

Which of the following is a characteristic of a white dwarf star?

Which of the following is a characteristic of a white dwarf star?

White dwarf stars, so called because of the white colour of the first few that were discovered, are characterized by a low luminosity, a mass on the order of that of the Sun, and a radius comparable to that of Earth.

What is the main characteristic of a dwarf star?

Dwarf star, any star of average or low luminosity, mass, and size. Important subclasses of dwarf stars are white dwarfs (see white dwarf star) and red dwarfs. Dwarf stars include so-called main-sequence stars, among which is the Sun.

What is the volume of a white dwarf?

A white dwarf, then, packs mass comparable to the Sun’s into a volume that is typically a million times smaller than the Sun’s; the average density of matter in a white dwarf must therefore be, very roughly, 1,000,000 times greater than the average density of the Sun, or approximately 106 g/cm3, or 1 tonne per cubic …

What is the best type of star?

The biggest and most luminous stars are referred to as blue supergiants and hypergiants. The best known blue supergiant is Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, which has a mass about 20 times that of the Sun and a luminosity more than 60,000 times greater.

Is the sun a low mass star?

Today we will look at the life of low-mass stars, which are those with mass less than about 2 times the mass of the Sun (less than 2 solar masses). So the Sun is a low-mass star. All such stars follow the same basic pattern. The next higher category, intermediate-mass stars, have masses from 2 to 8 solar masses.

What are 2 characteristics of low mass stars?

Low mass stars (stars with masses less than half the mass of the Sun) are the smallest, coolest and dimmest Main Sequence stars and orange, red or brown in colour. Low mass stars use up their hydrogen fuel very slowly and consequently have long lives.

What is the difference between a high mass star and a low mass star?

High mass stars have to generate a lot of energy in order to balance the force of gravity. Therefore they are very hot and luminous. That explains their position high on the Main Sequence. On the other hand, low mass stars have to generate little energy in order to balance the force due to gravity.

What type of mass star has the shortest life?

The most massive stars have the shortest lives. Stars that are 25 to 50 times that of the Sun live for only a few million years. They die so quickly because they burn massive amounts of nuclear fuel.

What type of visible star is the coolest?

  • A red dwarf is the smallest and coolest kind of star on the main sequence.
  • The coolest red dwarfs near the Sun have a surface temperature of ~2,000 K and the smallest have radii of ~9% that of the Sun, with masses about ~7.5% that of the Sun.

How long can a very small red dwarf star live?

While stars like the Sun have a lifetime of about 10 billion years, even the oldest red dwarf stars have not yet exhausted their internal supplies of hydrogen. The heaviest red dwarfs have lifetimes of tens of billions of years; the smallest have lifetimes of trillions of years.