For stars like our Sun (low mass):
* Red Giant: The star swells into a red giant, its outer layers expanding and cooling.
* Planetary Nebula: The outer layers are expelled, creating a beautiful, glowing shell of gas called a planetary nebula.
* White Dwarf: The remaining core, now a very dense and hot object, becomes a white dwarf. It slowly cools over billions of years, eventually becoming a cold, dark black dwarf.
For stars much larger than our Sun (high mass):
* Supergiant: The star becomes a supergiant, even larger and brighter than a red giant.
* Supernova: The core collapses catastrophically, resulting in a massive explosion called a supernova.
* Neutron Star: The remnants of the core may become a neutron star, a tiny but incredibly dense object where protons and electrons have fused into neutrons.
* Black Hole: If the core is massive enough, it will collapse further into a black hole, a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
So, the final fate of a star depends on its initial mass, with the most massive stars experiencing the most dramatic and powerful transformations.
