Types of Stars Series #3 Red Dwarf

For our third star in this series, we are going to talk about the most common star in the Universe as a whole. I am talking about the Red Dwarf star.

Red Dwarfs are about half the mass of the sun, and burn at about half of the temperature. They burn very slowly, but very consistently. They are among the most steady burning stars we know of. Because they burn so lightly and slowly, they have an incredibly long life span. It is so long, in fact, it is the only star that we do not know what happens to over time. Every known Red Dwarf has been nothing but a Red Dwarf.

It is somewhat surprising that we can even see the light of the Red Dwarf. They, on average, burn at 10% of the luminosity of our sun. Almost all of the light from a Red Dwarf is released as infrared light. Due to the difficulty of capturing an image of a red dwarf, I could only find an artist's depiction of a Red Dwarf star.