From studying stars, scientists have learned that a star’s lifetime is linked to its mass.
The more mass a star has, the shorter its life tends to be.
At first, this can seem strange. More massive stars have more fuel, so you might expect them to live longer.
However, observations and models show a different pattern. Massive stars burn through their fuel much faster.
A star like our Sun is expected to last for about 10 billion years. A star with several times the mass of the Sun may use up its fuel in less than 1 billion years.
Smaller stars can last much longer. A star with about half the mass of the Sun could last more than 40 billion years. That is a very long time. Scientists think the Universe is only about 14 billion years old.
Some stars end their lives in huge explosions called a supernova. Scientists think a star usually needs to be at least 8 to 10 times the mass of the Sun to explode in this way. Some stars may be even more massive, with up to 200 times the Sun’s mass.
Astronomers often use graphs and charts to spot patterns in large amounts of data.
One famous example is the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram. You may also see it called a colour-magnitude diagram. This diagram shows the link between a star’s temperature and its luminosity (its brightness).
Stars most likely to become supernovae appear near the top and top-right of the diagram. These are very hot and very bright giant and supergiant stars. However, not all supernovae are the same. Learn about the different types.