How was polaris born?
Polaris was born like most stars, through a difficult process....
Step 1: Nebulas
A nebula is made after a star explodes, or dies. Nebulas are a collection of gases and some solid materials from the dead star. In other words from another star's death a new one.
Step 2: Gathering mass
Click the picture to view a helpful interactive.
Here gravity takes over and starts pushing things into the center of the mass.
Step 3: Protostar
This is a protostar with it's accretion.
In this stage you can see the protostar and it's accretion disk. The protostar is the mass that will eventually become a star after the process is over.
Step 4: LUMINOSITY
The protostar is beginning to heat up and get bright.
Here the protostar begins to heat up, and to shine bright, but still is not quite a star.
step 5: A star is Born!
A new star with it's circumstellar disk
The wind and the jets from the protostar begin to expel not needed materials, such as the cloud core that helped create it.
It's a hot hot star!
A brand new Star
In this stage temperatures, and pressure climb until the new star can begin to fuse hydrogen atoms.
How stars live
Star's "lives" are really a process that we know as nuclear fusion. nucleur fusion is when you take two protons and het them up or make them move faster until they collide and smash together to create a new element. One of the only places possible to do nuclear fusion is in stars, the elements that stars can fuse or do fuse depends on their mass. For example A high mass star will be able to go passed hydrogen, helium, even carbon, but a low mass star will only be able to fuse hydrogen into helium.