The journal · The real sky
Stars
How stars are born, how they die, and why the sky you see is deeply unrepresentative.
8 articles.
Will Betelgeuse explode soon?
Probably not for tens of thousands of years. I've been asked on a lot of trails.
4 min read
Binary stars and why so many stars have company
Capella, Castor and Alpha Centauri each look like one star. None of them is.
3 min read
The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, explained simply
One chart. Temperature across, luminosity up, and most of stellar physics falls out of it.
4 min read
Neutron stars and pulsars
More than the Sun's mass in a city-sized ball, some of them spinning hundreds of times a second.
5 min read
Red dwarfs: the most common stars you've never seen
The great majority of stars, and not one you can pick out unaided.
4 min read
How stars are born
Cold gas, gravity and a long, slow contraction. I've watched the raw material from a mountain in Taiwan.
5 min read
What happens when a star dies
A star's mass is the main influence on how it ends, but mass loss and interaction with a companion can change the outcome.
5 min read
Supernovae: the different types explained
The classes follow spectra, not physics, so the names hide two different ways for a star to explode.
5 min read
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