The night sky is full of stars, and our own Sun is the nearest star to us. Stars seem to last forever, the patterns they make in the sky don’t seem to change, and the Sun seems to have been there for an extraordinary length of time. They don’t last forever; they have a life cycle, they form from a cloud of interstellar gas, and eventually run out of fuel. The more mass a star has, the shorter its life span.
Curriculum connection
Supports senior secondary learning in Earth and Space Science around:
- stellar characteristics
- temperature, colour and luminosity
- interpreting the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram
- stellar evolution
- apparent and absolute brightness/magnitude
- links between stellar properties and position on the H–R diagram
Particularly useful alongside current NCEA Level 2 Earth and Space Science learning about stars and planetary systems.
Learning pathway
The Colour of Stars
Understand how colour reveals temperature.
The Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram
Learn how temperature and luminosity are used to organise stars.
Life Cycle of Stars (current page)
Explore how mass changes the life and fate of a star.
Our Stellar Neighbourhood
Apply these ideas to real stars around the Sun.
The simulation below uses a highly simplified astrophysical model of a star’s life cycle to illustrate how stars of different masses evolve. The top slider is used to select the mass of a star relative to the mass of the Sun, and the second slider is used to advance through the life span.
