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Is there a maximum size for a star?
Short Answer: The accepted upper limit of a star’s mass is approximately 300 M (M = Solar Mass; 1 Solar Mass = the mass of the Sun), but the largest star recorded to date is named R136a1, measuring in at 265 M, giving it a total volume that is 27,000 times greater than our Sun.
How big can a star get before it collapses?
A star about the size of the Sun will collapse into a heap about the diameter of Earth, or about one-hundredth the original diameter of the star.
What happens if a star gets too big?
If the star is large enough, it can go through a series of less-efficient nuclear reactions to produce internal heat. However, eventually these reactions will no longer generate sufficient heat to support the star agains its own gravity and the star will collapse.
Why can stars only be so big?
But there is no clear-cut equation that determines how big a star can get since it depends not only on mass, but composition, evolutionary history and the strength of its stellar wind. For giant stars, such as UY Scuti, the outer atmosphere can continue to puff up and grow essentially without limit.
What is the smallest a true star can be?
The smallest theoretical mass for a star to support nuclear fusion is 0.07 or 0.08 solar masses, so smaller stars are out there.
How do dying stars create black holes?
A stellar black hole (or stellar-mass black hole) is a black hole formed by the gravitational collapse of a star. They have masses ranging from about 5 to several tens of solar masses. The process is observed as a hypernova explosion or as a gamma ray burst. These black holes are also referred to as collapsars.
How long does it take for a star to collapse into a black hole?
This process could take a long time, maybe a million years or more depending on how quickly it accretes the material. Once the neutron star is over the mass limit, which is at a mass of about 3 solar masses, the collapse to a black hole occurs in less than a second.
What happens to gravity when a star explodes?
Gravity takes over and the star collapses inward, throwing off its outer layers in the ensuing shockwaves. ‘ The balance in a super-giant star is different. The hot, compressed oxygen explodes in a runaway thermonuclear reaction that obliterates the star’s core, leaving behind little but glowing stardust.
Can a 500 solar mass star exist?
Observations of giant star cluster suggest upper limit. If there were no limit to how big stars can grow, you’d expect ones up to 500 times our Sun’s mass to be found in this dense cluster of stars. But Figer found no stars larger than about 130 solar masses.
How do we determine how big a star is?
find a star which will be covered by the Moon as it moves through the sky
What is the biggest known star?
The largest known star in the universe is UY Scuti, a hypergiant with a radius around 1,700 times larger than the sun. And it’s not alone in dwarfing Earth’s dominant star. The largest of all In 1860, German astronomers at the Bonn Observatory first cataloged UY Scuti, naming it BD -12 5055.
How big can galaxies get?
To get a size of its scale, if 100 billion human beings could occupy the space around each star, then the entire Galaxy could provide space for roughly 1022 humans, more than the number of grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches. The galaxy is only about 100,000 light-years wide and 1,000 light-years thick.
How big can a Nebula get?
Most nebulae can be hundreds of light years in diameter but the biggest ones can be from 600 000 ly (180,000 pc) to 2,600,000 ly (800,000 pc). Largest one: Nebula NGC 262 Halo Cloud is a spiral nebula surrounding NGC 262 an also the largest known nebula.