![]() After all the hydrogen in the core is fused into helium, the star changes rapidly - without nuclear radiation to resist it, gravity immediately crushes matter down into the star's core, quickly heating the star. The greater the mass of such a star, the more quickly it will use its hydrogen fuel and the shorter it stays on the main sequence. The supernova remnant joins the interstellar medium to form new stars. Star life cycle: At the top of this cycle a supernova takes place, releasing debris. Nuclear fusion converts a small amount of the mass of these atoms into extraordinary amounts of energy - for instance, 1 gram of mass converted entirely to energy would be equal to an explosion of roughly 22,000 tons of TNT. When the heat in the protostar reaches about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), atomic nuclei that normally repel each other start fusing together, and the star ignites. Due to its own gravitational pull, the cloud begins to collapse inward, and as it shrinks, it spins more and more quickly, with the outer parts becoming a disk while the innermost parts become a roughly spherical clump.Īccording to NASA, this collapsing material grows hotter and denser, forming a ball-shaped protostar. Ho)Ī star develops from a giant, slowly rotating cloud that is made up entirely or almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. The glow is created by hydrogen gas reacting with light from nearby stars. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows pockets of star formation. ![]()
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