Ep. 155: Dwarf Stars

Artist illustration of a red dwarf star.

We think we live near an average star, but that's not the case at all. Compared to most stars in the Universe, the Sun is a giant! Let's look at the small end of the stellar spectrum, to stars with a fraction of the size and mass of our own Sun. There are many ways that a star can get small, and they lead dramatically different lives and deaths.

Ep. 155: Dwarf Stars

• How big (or little) is our Sun?  Sun's Mass: 1.9891 ×1030 KG
• A red dwarf is a small, cool, very faint, main sequence star whose surface temperature is under about 4,000 K. Red dwarfs are the most common type of star. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf. (via Enchanted Learning)

• Red Dwarf Stars -- Universe Today
• Red Dwarf Stars — Wiki
• How long do stars last? — Universe Today
• Paper:  Habitability of Planets Around Red Dwarf Stars – University of Texas
• Gliese 581 — Wiki
• Hydrogen Burning — Cornell
• Brown Dwarf Stars – Cool Cosmos
• Research on Brown Dwarfs — UC Berkeley
• Red Dwarf Stars – Universe Today
• Red Dwarfs — Wiki
• Electron Degeneracy Pressure — Wolfram
• White Dwarf -- GSU
• White Dwarf – Goddard SFC
• Background radiation of the Universe (CMB) — UBC
• Black dwarf stars – Universe Today
• Black dwarfs – Wiki
• How are black dwarf stars and neutron stars similar? Goddard SFC
• Blue stragglers in globular clusters — SolStation
• Looking for Planets Around White Dwarf Stars -- Professor Astronomy
• Ep. 86 End of Everything Pt. 1
• Ep. 87 End of Everything Pt. 2

1. Julian Says:
   October 13th, 2009 at 6:58 am

   Sun is actually 10^30 kg not 10^33 kg! You've just fried us all!

2. David Madison Says:
   October 13th, 2009 at 9:18 am

   The numbers tossed around are astronomical. Putting in perspective the smallest red dwarf fusing hydrogen for twelve trillion years, that is a thousand times as long as the universe has existed. When you say it will take a quadrillion years for it to cool off to just about absolute zero, that is eighty thousand times the current age of the universe.

3. Jesse Cohen Says:
   October 13th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

   Congrats Dr. Pamela Gay on your appearance on History Channel's 'The Universe'! You were awesome!