What did you change in the model?
Labs / Astronomy
Stellar Life Cycle
Choose how much gas a star is born with and press play. It swells into a giant, traces a path across the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram on the right, and ends its life as one of three remnants — the outcome is decided almost entirely by that one starting number, its mass. Drag the timeline to scrub through billions of years.
Labs / Astronomy / Stellar Life Cycle
Stellar Life Cycle
Choose how much gas a star is born with and press play. It swells into a giant, traces a path across the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram on the right, and ends its life as one of three remnants — the outcome is decided almost entirely by that one starting number, its mass. Drag the timeline to scrub through billions of years.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Astronomy uses patterns in light and motion to explain objects we cannot touch directly. This model lets you change one part of a space system and see what the evidence would look like.
Explore
Try the model
Age 0 kyrStage ProtostarR 1 R☉T 5772 KFate White dwarf
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- A tiny red dwarf and a massive blue star are both born today. Which one is still shining long after the other has died?
- Where is the boundary mass? Nudge the slider up until the fate flips from white dwarf to neutron star — then to black hole.
- Watch the age readout during the main sequence versus the giant phase. Why does a star spend almost its whole life in one spot?
- The Sun's track loops far to the right of the HR diagram before collapsing. What is happening to its size and temperature there?
- Only the heaviest stars flash as a supernova. What does a low-mass star do instead to shed its outer layers?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Look for a cause-and-effect rule: what did you change, what responded, and what stayed the same? Astronomers use those patterns to infer how distant systems work.
Check
Before you leave
What visible evidence changed?
What rule could explain that change?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.