Question: What happens when a star dies

Conall Kavanagh answered on 24 Mar 2026:

There are a huge number of different things that happen when a star dies but generally they either lose their outer material and fade into a faint white dwarf star with a planetary nebula surrounding it (its worth googling planetary nebula as they are some of the most amazing looking things in space – and this is what will happen to our sun). If the star is heavier than that it will explode in a supernova and what is left behind is either a neutron star or black hole (depending on the original mass of the star). There are countless interesting things to think about here. For instance, many stars come in pairs (a binary star system) and so what happens to one star will affect the other as it is so nearby. We see pairs of stars where one is a neutron star and is pulling material of the larger (‘ordinary’) star next to it.