BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Do Red Dwarfs Live Forever? *new article*

Looking up at a clear, dark sky, you can see thousands of stars. Yet without binoculars or a telescope, the most common type of star is invisible. These are the small, cool red dwarfs that fill the sky and live practically forever.

Do Red Dwarfs Live Forever

For the stars burning hydrogen, how common are red dwarfs (type M) compared to Sun-like (type G) or the hottest type-O stars?

Here is a chart that gives a rough idea of the relative number of each type of star. Each type of star is a particular color, and the color tells us how hot it is and how big it is. Red is the coolest. The Sun - which is yellow - is hotter than that, and the the very hottest stars are the blue O-type stars. The most common stars are smaller and cooler. The least common stars are the biggest and hottest.

Have a look at the size comparison between the Sun, a red dwarf, a brown dwarf (a failed star), Jupiter and Earth. It's quite an eye-opener. The Sun, which isn't a really big star, is so much bigger than the other bodies that they can only show part of it in this image.