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supergiant
[ soo-per-jahy-uhnt ]
adjective
- extremely large; immense.
supergiant
/ ˈːəˌɪəԳ /
noun
- any of a class of extremely large and luminous stars, such as Betelgeuse, which have expanded to a large diameter and are eventually likely to explode as supernovae Compare giant star white dwarf
supergiant
/ ̅̅′ə-ī′ɵ /
- A star that is larger, brighter, and more massive than a giant star, being thousands of times brighter than the Sun and having a relatively short lifespan—only about 10 to 50 million years as opposed to around 5 billion years for the Sun. Supergiants, such as Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion, are only found in young cosmic structures such as the arms of spiral galaxies. Red supergiants such as Betelgeuse are late-stage stars, having burned most of their hydrogen in an earlier stage as main-sequence stars, and now fuse helium into heavier elements through the triple alpha process. Blue supergiants such as Rigel are thought to have evolved from red giants, though some are considered main-sequence stars. Supergiants are thought to eventually undergo a supernova, ending up as neutron stars or black holes.
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of supergiant1
Example Sentences
This rare supernova, called 2023ufx, originated from the core collapse of a red supergiant star, exploded on the outskirts of a nearby dwarf galaxy.
In their final life stages, red supergiants like WOH G64 shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can last thousands of years.
Some of the stars seen in this image, belonging to the surrounding galaxy, are red supergiants -- stars that are cool but very large, hundreds of times the diameter of our Sun.
The explosion was of a huge star, 20 times the mass of our Sun, a so-called blue supergiant.
The star is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in the constellation Orion.
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