I have questions about the lives of high mass stars/

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999 you wrote:

> hey!!! howz it goin....ok
> 1) what is a high mass?

Mass is a measure of how much "stuff" something is made of. For example,
a typical human has a mass of 90 kilograms. In reference to stars, a
"high mass" star is a star that has many times the mass of the sun (the
sun has a mass of 2 times 10^33 grams - that's a lot of matter, as much
as 10 million Earths!). Most astronomers would call a star with a mass
more than 8 times the mass of the sun as "high mass".

> 2) what is a super red giant?

Red supergiants are massive stars that are nearing the end of their
lives. Hot blue stars, when they run out of fuel, swell up to huge sizes
(perhaps as large as Jupiter's orbit!) and cool off, and thus appear red.

> 3) What is a Supernova?

A supernova is the end of the life of a high mass star. When it can no
longer produce light, the entire star explodes. The explosion is really
bright - brighter than an entire galaxy. So, stars that are normally too
dim to be seen can suddenly appear very bright if they explode. Ancient
astronomers saw these "guest stars", and called them "nova", which is
greek for "new".

> 4) WHat is a Pulsar?

A Pulsar is what is left of most massive stars after they explode. In
essence, the typical pulsar has as much matter as the sun squeezed into a
ball about 15 miles across. Very strange things happen to stars when
they are pulsars, and so pulsars are very interesting objects to study!

Thanks for writing, and good luck with your project!

Sincerely,
Kurtis Williams

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