Star Classification

All the stars we see in the night sky don't look the same. If you observe closely, you'll see that stars vary in color and size.

The different colors of stars are related to their surface temperature. Stars with relatively lower temperatures appear red, warmer stars are orange or yellow like the Sun, and the hottest stars shine blue-white or blue.

Scientists use the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram to plot a star’s brightness or absolute magnitude against its color or temperature in Kelvin. This graph can be used to study different types of stars, such as main sequence stars, white dwarfs, giants, and supergiants.

Now, let's compare the sizes of the different stars. The smallest stars are red dwarfs, with masses ranging from 0.08 to 0.6 times the solar mass.

Red giants, on the other hand, can have a mass of up to eight times the Sun’s mass, but their radius can be as much as 200 times that of the Sun.

The next category is Supergiants, which have a mass ranging from eight to twelve times the solar mass.