Our Sun is going to die someday.
The question of when and how this will happen is of interest to us since we are inhabitants of the Sun's planetary system.
We're not likely to be around to see it. We would like to know what will happen to it. We can use models of stellar evolution to understand our place in the universe.
"If we don't understand our own Sun, how can we expect to understand all of the other stars in the universe?" asked astronomer Orlagh Creevey of the Observatory de la Cte d'.
We know a lot about what will happen in the future. It will run out of hydrogen in its core over the next few billion years.
A hydrogen shell will be formed when the core begins to contract, bringing more hydrogen into the area. Shell burning is a process in which hydrogen and helium are dumped into the core.
The Sun will turn into a red giant during this time because of the expansion of the outer atmosphere. It will collapse into a white dwarf, which will take trillions of years to cool, once it runs out of hydrogen and helium.
The end of the main sequence depends on the individual characteristics of the stars. The ballpark figure of when things will go south can always use more evidence.
The best way to find Sun-like stars is to search the Milky Way for them at different stages of their lives, and then weave them into a timeline that shows their past and future.
The most detailed version of the Sun's life so far has been released by the European Space Agency.
The primary mission of Gaia is to map the Milky Way with the highest precision yet, and it has a suite of instruments for that. It takes detailed observations of the stars in the sky and tracks their positions and motions.
The values can be used to figure out factors. The star's age can be estimated by using a graph known as a Hertzsprung- Russell diagram.
A star's mass doesn't change as it ages, but its temperature does, based on the nuclear fusion taking place in the stellar core, which is observed as changes in brightness
Our Sun is classified as a G-type main sequence star, or yellow dwarf, and is a typical example of its kind.
It's about halfway through its main lifespan sequence. It's capable of generating a surface temperature of 5,772Kelvin. Looking at other G-type stars should give us a good idea of how our Sun will burn fuel, and when it will stop.
The team began combing the data because they wanted to see stars with cooler temperatures. It's because low temperature stars tend to be smaller and live longer than the hotter ones, so it's possible to see more about the history and stellar evolution of the Milky Way and the wider Universe.
The data can be used to zero in on stars with the same mass and chemical composition as the Sun. There were 5,863 Sun-like stars across the whole diagram.
The timing of its demise was confirmed by the identification of only the most Sun-like stars.
The temperature of the Sun will peak at around 8 billion years of age. At around 10 billion to 11 billion years of age, it will turn into a red giant star.
Unless something catastrophic happens to us, life on Earth is only a billion years old. The Sun is increasing in brightness by 10% every billion years, which means it is increasing in temperature. Earth will not be able to live as we know it if that change is made.
That is cheerful. There is still more to be done. We can learn more about how and why we are here by looking at the new Gaia catalog. It is possible to learn if Sun-like stars behave the same way. Look for planetary systems that look similar to the solar system.
We have not been able to find a system that is technologically advanced. The answers are available. We should be able to find them.
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