Quote:
Originally Posted by Liz
Interesting Carl, I also thought that red stars were old stars. Yesterday I was reading up on Antares, and was surprised to see that its a lot younger than the Sun. It was once a blue supergiant with 12 x the mass of our sun, and was burning its fuel at a much quicker rate. Hmmm.
The article said that the bigger the star, the harder they fall.
http://my.execpc.com/60/B3/culp/astr.../scorpius.html |
That's right...Antares is only about 5-6 million years old, or thereabouts. if you want the lowdown on the star, here's a pretty accurate description...
Antares
Given its mass, it would've started life as a O9-B1 Main Sequence star with a radius of about 5-8 times the Sun and a surface temp up around the 32000-35000K mark.
Bigger stars burn their core hydrogen a lot faster than smaller stars like the Sun. I could workout the exact rate of burning difference between the two, but just to give you an idea the rate of core burning for a high mass star such as Antares, in its Main Sequence lifetime, would be several thousand times greater than it is for the Sun.