Binary stars on color-brightness plot (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

Binary stars on color-brightness plot

Caption

When stars are plotted according to their color and brightness, they fall along a line called the main sequence, where they spend most of their lives, evolving into red giants and then white dwarfs only at the end of their lives. The previous survey of nearby binary stars found several hundred, whereas the newest atlas contains 1.3 million pairs, allowing astronomers to better understand the evolution of binary stars and stars in general.

Credit

Kareem El-Badry, UC Berkeley

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