Assignment 6

Chapter 10
Thomas Edison State College

Introductory Astronomy
AST-101-GS002
Semester - October 2013

1-A Star Dies! Using the same technique you applied in question 2 in Assignment
5, trace the events in the demise of stars of low stellar mass, those of medium stellar mass,
and those that are very massive.
A star spends a majority of its life as a main sequence star. The speed at which a star ages
depends on its mass; as the star ages it expands into a giant star on the H-R diagram. As the
amount of hydrogen is exhausted during the amount of helium increases, the star loses the ability
to generate nuclear energy. Due to the stars lack of ability to generate the nuclear energy the star
is unable to maintain equilibrium and begins to contract and die down. The helium at the core of
the star temperature rises and beings to heat unprocessed hydrogen, which causes the hydrogen
to become fused in a shell around the exhausted stars core. The hydrogen fused shell pushed
outward which heats the outer layers of the star forcing them to expand. Once the star begins to
expand, the stars mass increases which they are then moved up in the H-R diagram of the red
giant or supergiant section (p, 199).
Out of all the red dwarf stars born, none has yet to die. Since they have very little mass,
they do not have much weight to support. After a low mass star like the Sun exhausts the supply
of hydrogen in its core, there is no longer any source of heat to support the core against gravity.
Hydrogen burning continues in a shell around the core and the star evolves into a red giant.
When the Sun becomes a red giant, its atmosphere will envelope the Earth and our planet will be
consumed in a fiery death. They consume their hydrogen very slowly and have yet to burn
themselves out. The star is not limited to the hydrogen in its core because the hydrogen is
consumed uniformly throughout the star. The core of the star collapses under gravity's pull until
it reaches a high enough density to start burning helium to carbon. The helium burning phase will
last about 100 million years, until the helium is exhausted in the core and the star becomes a red

supergiant. Astronomers know that the red dwarf stars will eventually use up all of their
hydrogen living on the lower main sequence and dying out in about a hundred billion years (p200).
Massive stars burn brighter and perish more dramatically than most. When a star ten
times more massive than Sun exhaust the helium in the core, the nuclear burning cycle continues.
The carbon core contracts further and reaches high enough temperature to burn carbon to
oxygen, neon, silicon, sulfur and finally to iron. Iron is the most stable form of nuclear matter
and there is no energy to be gained by burning it to any heavier element. Without any source of
heat to balance the gravity, the iron core collapses until it reaches nuclear densities. This high
density core resists further collapse causing the infalling matter to "bounce" off the core. This
sudden core bounce (which includes the release of energetic neutrinos from the core) produces a
supernova explosion. For one brilliant month, a single star burns brighter than a whole galaxy of
a billion stars (p,200).
Supernova explosions inject carbon, oxygen, silicon and other heavy elements up to iron
into interstellar space. They are also the site where most of the elements heavier than iron are
produced. This heavy element enriched gas will be incorporated into future generations of stars
and planets. Without supernova, the fiery death of massive stars, there would be no carbon,
oxygen or other elements that make life possible. The fate of the hot neutron core depends upon
the mass of the progenitor star. If the progenitor mass is around ten times the mass of the Sun,
the neutron star core will cool to form a neutron star. Neutron stars are potentially detectable as
"pulsars", powerful beacons of radio emission. If the progenitor mass is larger, then the resultant
core is so heavy that not even nuclear forces can resist the pull of gravity and the core collapses
to form a black hole (p,202).

2. Explain how Type I and Type II supernovae occur.

A supernova is an explosion of a massive supergiant star. It may shine with the brightness
of 10 billion suns. The total energy output may be 1044 joules, as much as the total output of the
sun during its 10 billion year lifetime. The likely scenario is that fusion proceeds to build up a
core of iron. The "iron group" of elements around mass number A=60 are the most tightly bound
nuclei so that no more energy can be gotten from nuclear fusion. In fact, either the fission or
fusion of iron group elements will absorb a dramatic amount of energy - like the film of a nuclear
explosion run in reverse (p,219).
If the temperature increase from gravitational collapse rises high enough to fuse iron, the
almost instantaneous absorption of energy will cause a rapid collapse to reheat and restart the
process. Out of control, the process can apparently occur on the order of seconds after a star
lifetime of millions of years. Electrons and protons fuse into neutrons, sending out massive
numbers of neutrinos. The outer layers will be opaque to neutrinos, so the neutrino shock wave
will carry matter with it in a cataclysmic explosion.
Supernovae are classified as Type I or Type II depending upon the shape of their light
curves and the nature of their spectra. The Type I supernovae occurs in the white dwarf star in a
close binary system. If two stars are close enough, the gravitational pull of the white dwarf star
will draw mass from the larger star. The white dwarfs mass will eventually accumulate to that of
1.4 times the mass of the sun, and then is will cause a reaction, collapse and then explode
causing supernovae to occur.
The Type II supernovae to occur the star must be about 15 times more massive than the
sun. The massive star will eventually run out of hydrogen and then the helium that fuels its core
therefore making the core collapse. A large amount of energy is then released in a form of

neutrinos and electromagnetic radiation. This energy causes the star to explode in a
supernova(p.222).
After the supernova occurs, many different types of objects can be left behind. One of
those objects is known as an ultra-dense small star called a neutron star; the neutron star is made
up of mainly neutrons. There are also pulsars that are rapidly rotating magnetized neutron stars.
Sometimes are supernovae explosions occur there are even black holes left. Astronomers are
locating these supernovae by observing distant galaxies over and over. Quite often, they find
bright, new objects appearing on their images (p,224).
By taking the spectra of and producing light curves for enough distant supernovae, the
astronomers can place constraints on the value of the mass of the Universe, and therefore
determine whether it will collapse on itself or expand forever. Currently, new results seem to
indicate that the amount of matter in the Universe is not enough to halt the expansion. However,
more results need to be obtained to verify these findings (p,222).

References:
Horizons: Exploring the Universe, 10th ed., by Michael A. Seeds (Belmont, CA:
Brooks/Cole-Thompson Learning, 2008).
Supernovae - C.R. Nave (Georgia State University). (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/snovcn.html_br
What are Supernova - California Institute of Technology. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/vandyk/supernova.html_br