Yes, but most of the stars you can see are far larger than our sun. Stars the same size as our sun have to be very close to be seen at all and then are very faint, our sun is the fourth smallest star you can see with your naked eye.
Towards the end of this talk Fraser Cain talks about that:
Here is a video showing how much larger the biggest stars in the sky are than ours.
But that's just because smaller stars are hard to see.
Actually yellow dwarf stars as big as our sun are rare. Most stars are much smaller, orange dwarfs or red dwarfs. But they are far to faint to see with the naked eye in the night sky.
So our star is a middle sized star, in some ways it is large because nearly all stars are smaller. In other ways it is small because it is far far smaller than the largest stars in our galaxy.
Also they have different lifetimes and fates. There are basically two pathways here, small stars and larger stars.
The smaller yellow, orange and red dwarf stars will eventually run out of hydrogen fuel which they burn into helium. They then burn helium into atom like Carbon and Oxygen, and get much hotter, and so expand to become a red giant which happens to our sun about a billion years from now.
But they soon run out of helium fuel also.
As they use up their helium fuel they throw off material to form the beautiful planetary nebulae. Finally when they run out of helium, there is nothing left except a white dwarf - a slowly cooling cinder of a star that no longer produces new energy itself, but is so hot it cools down for trillions of years.
See: The Evolution of the Sun
If a star is a bit heavier than our sun it follows the other pathway, it becomes a supergiant star when it runs out of its hydrogen fuel, which it does much sooner because larger stars burn their fuel more quickly
Then that when it runs out of helium fuel burns through a sequence of other fuels until eventually it gets to iron and nickel, which it can't burn.
It then collapses on itself and the collapse leads to an explosion outwards, a supernova which, for a short while, is as bright as an entire galaxy. See Type II supernova The remnant of that supernova is a neutron star, which spins rapidly, and which we might detect as a pulsar.
Or it may collapse to a black hole if the original star was large enough.
Towards the end of this talk Fraser Cain talks about that:
Here is a video showing how much larger the biggest stars in the sky are than ours.
But that's just because smaller stars are hard to see.
Actually yellow dwarf stars as big as our sun are rare. Most stars are much smaller, orange dwarfs or red dwarfs. But they are far to faint to see with the naked eye in the night sky.
So our star is a middle sized star, in some ways it is large because nearly all stars are smaller. In other ways it is small because it is far far smaller than the largest stars in our galaxy.
Also they have different lifetimes and fates. There are basically two pathways here, small stars and larger stars.
The smaller yellow, orange and red dwarf stars will eventually run out of hydrogen fuel which they burn into helium. They then burn helium into atom like Carbon and Oxygen, and get much hotter, and so expand to become a red giant which happens to our sun about a billion years from now.
But they soon run out of helium fuel also.
As they use up their helium fuel they throw off material to form the beautiful planetary nebulae. Finally when they run out of helium, there is nothing left except a white dwarf - a slowly cooling cinder of a star that no longer produces new energy itself, but is so hot it cools down for trillions of years.
See: The Evolution of the Sun
If a star is a bit heavier than our sun it follows the other pathway, it becomes a supergiant star when it runs out of its hydrogen fuel, which it does much sooner because larger stars burn their fuel more quickly
Then that when it runs out of helium fuel burns through a sequence of other fuels until eventually it gets to iron and nickel, which it can't burn.
It then collapses on itself and the collapse leads to an explosion outwards, a supernova which, for a short while, is as bright as an entire galaxy. See Type II supernova The remnant of that supernova is a neutron star, which spins rapidly, and which we might detect as a pulsar.
Or it may collapse to a black hole if the original star was large enough.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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