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supergiant star

   Also found in: Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.53 sec.
supergiant star: see red giant red giant, star that is relatively cool but very luminous because of its great size. All normal stars are expected to pass eventually through a red-giant phase as a consequence of stellar evolution .
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supergiant star

Star of very great natural luminosity and relatively enormous size, typically several magnitudes brighter and several times larger than a giant star. Like other classes of stars, they are distinguished in practice by examination of certain lines in their spectra (see spectroscopy). A supergiant may have a diameter several hundred times that of the Sun and a luminosity nearly a million times as great. Supergiants live probably only a few million years, an extremely short life for a star.



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It consists of a blue supergiant star and a cool star.
Supergiant stars had to go through long cycles of collapse and re-expansion to create heavier elements, out of which humans and our planet are composed.
The images reveal that the red supergiant star was about 8 times as massive as the sun, which is near the low end of what theory predicts for the mass of stars that can flame out in a supernova.
 
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