star, any massive self-luminous celestial body of 

gas that shines
by radiation derived from its internal energy sources. Of the tens of
billions of trillions of stars composing the observable universe, only
a very small percentage are visible to the naked eye. Many stars
occur in pairs, multiple systems, or star clusters. The members of
such stellar groups are physically related through common origin
and are bound by mutual gravitational attraction. Somewhat related
to star clusters are stellar associations, which consist of loose groups
of physically similar stars that have insufficient mass as a group to
remain together as an organization.

This article describes the properties and evolution of individual

stars. Included in the discussion are the sizes, energetics,
temperatures, masses, and chemical compositions of stars, as well
as their distances and motions. The myriad other stars are
compared with the Sun, strongly implying that “our” star is in no
way special.
General considerations
The Sun as a point of comparison
Variations in stellar size
With regard to mass, size, and intrinsic brightness, the Sun is a
typical star. Its approximate mass is 2 × 1030 kg (about
330,000 Earth masses), its approximate radius 700,000 km
(430,000 miles), and its approximate luminosity 4 × 1033 ergs per
second (or equivalently 4 × 1023 kilowatts of power). Other stars
often have their respective quantities measured in terms of those of
the Sun.
imaging using ultraviolet light
The Sun as imaged in extreme ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) satellite. A massive loop-shaped eruptive prominence is visible at the lower
left. Nearly white areas are the hottest; deeper reds indicate cooler temperatures.
NASA
Learn about the different types of stars categorized according to their mass and
temperature - red dwarfs, red giants, supergiants, white, and brown dwarf stars
Overview of several types of stars, notably the red dwarf, red giant, supergiant, white dwarf, and
brown dwarf.
© Open University (A Britannica Publishing Partner)See all videos for this article
Many stars vary in the amount of light they radiate. Stars such
as Altair, Alpha Centauri A and B, and Procyon A are called dwarf
stars; their dimensions are roughly comparable to those of the
Sun. Sirius A and Vega, though much brighter, also are dwarf stars;
their higher temperatures yield a larger rate of emission per unit
area. Aldebaran A, Arcturus, and Capella A are examples of giant
stars, whose dimensions are much larger than those of the Sun.
Observations with an interferometer (an instrument that measures
the angle subtended by the diameter of a star at the observer’s
position), combined with parallax measurements (which yield a
star’s distance; see below Determining stellar distances), give sizes
of 12 and 22 solar radii for Arcturus and Aldebaran
A. Betelgeuse and Antares A are examples of supergiant stars. The
latter has a radius some 300 times that of the Sun, whereas
the variable star Betelgeuse oscillates between roughly 300 and 600
solar radii. Several of the stellar class of white dwarf stars, which
have low luminosities and high densities, also are among the
brightest stars. Sirius B is a prime example, having a radius one-
thousandth that of the Sun, which is comparable to the size of
Earth. Also among the brightest stars are Rigel A, a young
supergiant in the constellation Orion, and Canopus, a bright beacon
in the Southern Hemisphere often used for spacecraft navigation.
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Stellar activity and mass loss

The Sun’s activity is apparently not unique. It has been found that
stars of many types are active and have stellar winds analogous to
the solar wind. The importance and ubiquity of strong stellar winds
became apparent only through advances in
spaceborne ultraviolet and X-ray astronomy as well as
in radio and infrared surface-based astronomy.

X-ray observations that were made during the early 1980s yielded
some rather unexpected findings. They revealed that nearly all types
of stars are surrounded by coronas having temperatures of one
million kelvins (K) or more. Furthermore, all stars seemingly
display active regions, including spots, flares, and prominences
much like those of the Sun (see sunspot; solar flare; solar
prominence). Some stars exhibit starspots so large that an entire
face of the star is relatively dark, while others display flare activity
thousands of times more intense than that on the Sun.

solar flare
One of the strongest solar flares ever detected, in an extreme ultraviolet (false-colour) image of
the Sun taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, November 4, 2003.
Such powerful flares, called X-class flares, release intense radiation that can temporarily cause
blackouts in radio communications all over Earth.
SOHO/ESA/NASA
The highly luminous hot, blue stars have by far the strongest stellar
winds. Observations of their ultraviolet spectra with telescopes on
sounding rockets and spacecraft have shown that their wind speeds
often reach 3,000 km (roughly 2,000 miles) per second, while
losing mass at rates up to a billion times that of the solar wind. The
corresponding mass-loss rates approach and sometimes exceed one
hundred-thousandth of a solar mass per year, which means that one
entire solar mass (perhaps a tenth of the total mass of the star) is
carried away into space in a relatively short span of 100,000 years.
Accordingly, the most luminous stars are thought to lose substantial
fractions of their mass during their lifetimes, which are calculated to
be only a few million years.
Ultraviolet observations have proved that to produce such great
winds the pressure of hot gases in a corona, which drives the solar
wind, is not enough. Instead, the winds of the hot stars must be
driven directly by the pressure of the energetic ultraviolet
radiation emitted by these stars. Aside from the simple realization
that copious quantities of ultraviolet radiation flow from such hot
stars, the details of the process are not well understood. Whatever is
going on, it is surely complex, for the ultraviolet spectra of the stars
tend to vary with time, implying that the wind is not steady. In an
effort to understand better the variations in the rate of flow,
theorists are investigating possible kinds of instabilities that might
be peculiar to luminous hot stars.

Observations made with radio and infrared telescopes as well as

with optical instruments prove that luminous cool stars also have
winds whose total mass-flow rates are comparable to those of the
luminous hot stars, though their velocities are much lower—about
30 km (20 miles) per second. Because luminous red stars are
inherently cool objects (having a surface temperature of about
3,000 K, or half that of the Sun), they emit very little detectable
ultraviolet or X-ray radiation; thus, the mechanism driving the
winds must differ from that in luminous hot stars. Winds from
luminous cool stars, unlike those from hot stars, are rich in dust
grains and molecules. Since nearly all stars more massive than the
Sun eventually evolve into such cool stars, their winds, pouring into
space from vast numbers of stars, provide a major source of new gas
and dust in interstellar space, thereby furnishing a vital link in the
cycle of star formation and galactic evolution. As in the case of the
hot stars, the specific mechanism that drives the winds of the cool
stars is not understood; at this time, investigators can only surmise
that gas turbulence, magnetic fields, or both in the atmospheres of
these stars are somehow responsible.

Strong winds also are found to be associated with objects

called protostars, which are huge gas balls that have not yet become
full-fledged stars in which energy is provided by nuclear reactions
(see below Star formation and evolution). Radio and infrared
observations of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and carbon
monoxide (CO) molecules in the Orion Nebula have revealed clouds
of gas expanding outward at velocities approaching 100 km (60
miles) per second. Furthermore, high-resolution, very-long-baseline
interferometry observations have disclosed expanding knots of
natural maser (coherent microwave) emission of water vapour near
the star-forming regions in Orion, thus linking the strong winds to
the protostars themselves. The specific causes of these winds
remain unknown, but if they generally accompany star formation,
astronomers will have to consider the implications for the
early solar system. After all, the Sun was presumably once a
protostar too.
Distances to the stars
Determining stellar distances
Distances to stars were first determined by the technique of
trigonometric parallax, a method still used for nearby stars. When
the position of a nearby star is measured from two points on
opposite sides of Earth’s orbit (i.e., six months apart), a small
angular (artificial) displacement is observed relative to a
background of very remote (essentially fixed) stars. Using the radius
of Earth’s orbit as the baseline, the distance of the star can be found
from the parallactic angle, p. If p = 1″ (one second of arc), the
distance of the star is 206,265 times Earth’s distance from the Sun
—namely, 3.26 light-years. This unit of distance is termed
the parsec, defined as the distance of an object whose parallax
equals one arc second. Therefore, one parsec equals 3.26 light-
years. Since parallax is inversely proportional to distance, a star at
10 parsecs would have a parallax of 0.1″. The nearest star to
Earth, Proxima Centauri (a member of the triple system of Alpha
Centauri), has a parallax of 0.76813″, meaning that its distance is
1/0.76813, or 1.302, parsecs, which equals 4.24 light-years. The
parallax of Barnard’s star, the next closest after the Alpha Centauri
system, is 0.54831″, so that its distance is nearly 6 light-years.
Errors of such parallaxes are now typically 0.001′′. Thus,
measurements of trigonometric parallaxes are useful for only the
nearby stars within a few thousand light-years. In fact, of the
approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy (also
simply called the Galaxy), the Hipparcos satellite has measured only
about 100,000 to an accuracy of 0.001′′. For more distant stars,
indirect methods are used; most of them depend on comparing
the intrinsic brightness of a star (found, for example, from its
spectrum or other observable property) with its apparent
brightness.

stellar distances
Calculating stellar distances.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Nearest stars
Only three stars, Alpha Centauri, Procyon, and Sirius, are both
among the 20 nearest and among the 20 brightest stars. Ironically,
most of the relatively nearby stars are dimmer than the Sun and are
invisible without the aid of a telescope. By contrast, some of the
well-known bright stars outlining
the constellations have parallaxes as small as the limiting value of
0.001″ and are therefore well beyond several hundred light-years’
distance from the Sun. The most luminous stars can be seen at great
distances, whereas the intrinsically faint stars can be observed only
if they are relatively close to Earth.
Sirius
Sirius A and B (lower left) photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI), and M. Barstow (University of Leicester)
Although the lists of the brightest and the nearest stars pertain to
only a very small number of stars, they nonetheless serve to
illustrate some important points. The stars listed fall roughly into
three categories: (1) giant stars and supergiant stars having sizes of
tens or even hundreds of solar radii and extremely low average
densities—in fact, several orders of magnitude less than that
of water (one gram per cubic centimetre); (2) dwarf stars having
sizes ranging from 0.1 to 5 solar radii and masses from 0.1 to about
10 solar masses; and (3) white dwarf stars having masses
comparable to that of the Sun but dimensions appropriate
to planets, meaning that their average densities are hundreds of
thousands of times greater than that of water.

These rough groupings of stars correspond to stages in their life

histories (see below Later stages of evolution). The second category
is identified with what is called the main sequence (see
below Hertzsprung-Russell diagram) and includes stars that
emit energy mainly by converting hydrogen into helium in their
cores. The first category comprises stars that have exhausted the
hydrogen in their cores and are burning hydrogen within a shell
surrounding the core. The white dwarfs represent the final stage in
the life of a typical star, when most available sources of energy have
been exhausted and the star has become relatively dim.

The large number of binary stars and even multiple systems is

notable. These star systems exhibit scales comparable in size to that
of the solar system. Some, and perhaps many, of the nearby single
stars have invisible (or very dim) companions detectable by their
gravitational effects on the primary star; this orbital motion of the
unseen member causes the visible star to “wobble” in its motion
through space. Some of the invisible companions have been found
to have masses on the order of 0.001 solar mass or less, which is in
the range of planetary rather than stellar dimensions. Current
observations suggest that they are genuine planets, though some are
merely extremely dim stars (sometimes called brown dwarfs).
Nonetheless, a reasonable inference that can be drawn from these
data is that double stars and planetary systems are formed by
similar evolutionary processes.