Shell Burning

Nuclear “burning” regions that occur in shells surrounding a star’s coreIn the context of planetary formation, the core is the central region of a large differentiated asteroid, planet or moon and made up of denser materials than the surrounding mantle and crust. For example, the cores of the Earth, the terrestrial planets and differentiated asteroids are rich in metallic iron-nickel. Click on Term to Read More. For example, helium burningThe triple alpha process. This is the main source of energy production in red giants and red supergiants. Click on Term to Read More might take place in the core (where the hydrogenLightest and most common element in the universe (~92% by atoms; ~75% by mass). Hydrogen's isotopes are: • ¹H (99.9885 %)
• ²H (0.0115 %), also called deuterium.
• ³H, also called Tritium, is a radioactive (t½ = 12.32 y) by-product of atmospheric thermonuclear tests in Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere.
Click on Term to Read More has been exhausted) with a shell of hydrogen burningProcesses by which hydrogen (1H) is fused into helium (4He) with in a star. The five possible fusion paths can be divided into two sets of processes: the Proton-Proton (PP) process, which depends only on the amount of H and He in the star, and the CNO cycle (carbon-nitrogen-oxygen), which Click on Term to Read More surrounding it. Stars may have more than one region of shell burning during their stellar evolutionChanges in a stars luminosity and temperature over its lifetime; conventionally, plotted on an Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. All stars, irrespective of their mass spend most of their lifetime on the main sequence. The more massive a star, the more luminous and hotter it is. As all stars age, they enter, each shell with its own nuclear reactions.