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Massive stars also continue to expand as hydrogen shell burning progresses, but they do so at approximately constant luminosity and move horizontally across the HR diagram. In this way they can quickly pass through blue giant, bright blue giant, blue supergiant, and yellow supergiant classes, until they become red supergiants.
By analogy to the red giant branch for low-mass stars, this region is also called the blue giant branch. [2] They are larger than the Sun but smaller than a red supergiant , with surface temperatures of 10,000–50,000 K and luminosities from about 10,000 to a million times that of the Sun.
A giant star has a substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or dwarf) star of the same surface temperature. [1] They lie above the main sequence (luminosity class V in the Yerkes spectral classification) on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. [2]
Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion is a typical blue-white supergiant; the three stars of Orion's Belt are all blue supergiants; Deneb is the brightest star in Cygnus, another blue supergiant; and Delta Cephei (itself the prototype) and Polaris are Cepheid variables and yellow supergiants. Antares and VV Cephei A are red ...
Some of the brightest stars in the night sky, such as Rigel and Antares, are in the list. While supergiants are typically defined as stars with luminosity classes Ia, Iab or Ib, other definitions exist, such as those based on stellar evolution. [1] Therefore, stars with other luminosity classes can sometimes be considered supergiants.
The images show the surface of the star R. Doradus, a red giant star 180 light-years away in the Dorado constellation. The star has a diameter about 350 times that of the sun, and it serves as a ...
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The blue half-ring centered near the left edge represents the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet of the Solar System. Stars with an initial mass above about 25 M ☉ quickly move away from the main sequence and increase somewhat in luminosity to become blue supergiants. They cool and enlarge at approximately constant luminosity to become a ...