How a star dies depends upon how much mass it had while it was alive as a main sequence star. Generally speaking, core-collapse induced supernovae occur with stars that are 8 solar masses or more in size while smaller mass stars (like our Sun) will often slowly fade away. As these smaller mass stars run out of material that can be used for nuclear fusion within their cores they swell to monstrous proportions and shed their outer layers, exposing the white hot core at their centers. Radiation from the exposed core makes the shed layers fluoresce like the Eskimo Nebula seen here.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 13:44:50 +0000
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