Starship Asterisk*

bystander wrote:

ESO: Lives and Deaths of Sibling Stars (NGC 3293)

Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

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http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1422/ wrote:

Take the bright orange star at the bottom right of the cluster. This huge star, a red giant, would have been born as one of the biggest and most luminous of its litter, but bright stars burn out fast. As the star used up the fuel at its core its internal dynamics changed and it began to swell and cool, becoming the red giant we now observe. Red giants are reaching the end of their life cycle, but this red giant’s sister stars are still in what is known as the pre-main-sequence — the period before the long, stable, middle period in a star’s life. We see these stars in the prime of their life as hot, bright and white against the red and dusty background.