1. A Star’s Life Cycle EQ: How do stars live and die?

2. How does a star begin? Nebula: Stars are born when a large cloud of gas and dust are pulled together and the intense heat starts nuclear fusion.

3. Another star nebula

4. What is nuclear fusion? Under INTENSE HEAT AND GRAVITY, Hydrogen atoms fuse together to make Helium atoms. This creates immense energy, which we see as light, and feel as the sun’s heat. Hydrogen Isotopes

5. How long will a star live? Depends on its mass. Small stars live longer because they use their fuel slower. Can live up to 200 billion years! Medium Stars, like our sun, live around 10 billion years. We are halfway through our sun’s lifetime. Massive stars die quickest, because they use up their fuel the fastest. May only live 10 million years.

6. End of life Out of fuel…core shrinks and outer portion expands. Hydrogen has run out, Helium fuses to become heavier elements like carbon, oxygen and iron. Low-medium mass star becomes a red giant. High mass star becomes a supergiant

7. Death of a Star  Planetary Nebula: Glowing cloud of gas at death of red giant.  White dwarf: the blue-white hot core of a medium sized star left after the outer layers drift into space.  Supernova: Huge explosion of a supergiant.  A neutron star is the remains of an exploded high-mass star.  Black holes remains of massive stars that pulls in all material within its gravitational pull. 11/15/99

8. Cat’s Eye Nebula

9. White Dwarf stars are about the same size as Earth, or even smaller.

10. Supernova

11. Neutron Stars are so dense that one teaspoon full has the mass of 2,000 elephants. You can see one here in the center of the gas.

12. This is a massive black hole at the center of a galaxy about 20 million light years from us. This is a very active black hole, sucking in matter, gas, and light around it. Nothing will escape its gravitational pull.

13. Milky Way’s Massive Black Hole

14. Now lets watch two Brain Pops: One on a star’s life cycle and one on black holes!