Home Links Science Notes Lesson 1 . Some stars could be good suns for life-bearing worlds, some could not. Here is some information to help you to choose your star.
Stars have life cycles.
They begin in clouds of stellar dust and gas, accumulating mass by gravitational attraction. As the dust and gas contract, energy is released, and the mass heats up and begins to glow. Very massive protostars contract rapidly, perhaps taking only ten thousand years to begin the next phase. Smaller stars, like our Sol, may take tens of millions of years to reach it. In the center of the protostar, the heat increases until nuclear fusion begins.