Low Mass Stars Research Paper

Stars form by starting in a nebula, which is a cloud of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust and are born in cold, and dense clouds of gas which the pressure cannot resist gravitational contraction. The gas and dust compress due to gravitational forces, forming a slowly rotating globule. The globule is cooled by emitting radio waves and infrared radiation. It is compressed by gravitational forces and by shock waves of pressure from supernova or the hot gas released from nearby stars. These forces cause the roughly spherical globule to collapse and rotate and take a process of collapse from between 10,000 to 1,000,000 years. Gravitational forces overcome gas pressure and the globule collapses and the cooling occurs and its spin increases.

In the main sequence stage of a low-mass star and during its lifetime it will consume its hydrogen core and convert it to helium and that the core shrinks and heats up steadily and it becomes more luminous. All the hydrogen in the core will be exhausted by nuclear fusion and low-mass stars will spend billions of years fusing hydrogen to helium in their cores and the star's of the convection zone will rotate quickly which it will twist their magnetic fields and can result in a flare of radiation. The self-regulating process called solar thermostat has gravitational equilibrium and energy balance work to keep the fusion rate and luminosity steady. The next life stage of a Low-mass star is the Red Giant stage where gravity will collapse the core due to hydrogen fusion no longer happening in the star's core. The outer layers will expand while the core is shrinking and luminosity begins to increase and if a mass of the Sun the expansion would take about a billion years and the stars radius increases 100 times and that its luminosity increases even more. The star called a red giant has a hydrogen burning shell that forms around the helium core the shell keeps giving the core helium overtime. When the core becomes hotter and denser and gets to the temperature 100 million K the helium nuclei begin to fuse into carbon. Helium flash takes place when the helium fusion heats up the core rapidly and it causes the core to expand and that which it lowers the temperature of the core and reduces the total energy output and then the layers contract and the stars temperature increases a little. The star fuses all of its core helium into carbon after about 100 million years and around this core the helium fusion shell forms and then it has become a Red Giant again and remains one for a few more million years while its outer layer continues to expand. As