Red Giants


Red giants are one of the biggest types of stars. An example of a red giant is Betelgeuse (pronounced bettle juice. Ugh.) and Antares. They are made when fusion in their core actually turns helium into carbon, then carbon into oxygen, then into silicon, then they die when they fuse into iron. They are much too massive and in the end…… BOOM, we have a supernova (Now THAT’S where gold and uranium are made).
The biggest red giant known (so far) is UY Scuti, located in the constellation Scutum. To imagine how big it is, UY Scuti has about 1700 times of our Sun’s radius! However it is very far from us (9500 light years away). It is really large at a diameter of 1 - 1.3 billion miles but I think it should be near the end of its life. If it were to replace our Sun, it would instantly swallow Mercury, Venus, and all the way to Saturn. Not only that, but its extremely high gravity would gobble up almost all the solar system objects, and the leftovers would take over a thousand years to orbit the gigantic star.
Note : Before UY Scuti was found in 2012, the largest red giant was my favorite VY Canis Majoris!

Anyway, Red giants are really quite cool compared to other types of star. They are approximately at 6000 °C or lower. Our Sun will also become a red giant someday and swallow Earth in the process. But by then, we will probably have colonized a new planet.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 30, 2017 at 12:14 AM

    very informative ... good writting :) ps : why would our sun become a red giant someday ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Little Geek NatMay 1, 2017 at 4:08 AM

      Thank you for reading! :) Anyway, the Sun will become a red giant because the Sun will eventually use all its fuel such as hydrogen and helium due to fusion. Then, like all other stars, its core will swell and its layers will expand.

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