(Celestial Objects) any luminosity class V star, such as the sun, lying in the main sequence of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Also called: main-sequence star See also red dwarf, white dwarf
A small star of low mass that gives off an average or below average amount of light. The sun is a dwarf star.
Did You Know? In the world of stars, even a dwarf is quite large. At 864,000 miles in diameter and more than 330,000 times the mass of Earth, our sun is still a dwarf star. But a dwarf star is indeed small compared with certain other kinds of stars, such as red giants. Dwarf stars come in several varieties. The type of star known as a white dwarf is in fact the remnant of a red giant that has burned nearly all its fuel. Because of the gravitational attraction of its atoms for each other, the star starts to collapse in on itself. After it contracts and blows its outer layers away, the red giant ends up as a white dwarf. A black dwarf is a burned-out white dwarf that no longer gives off detectable radiation. Astronomers also refer to brown dwarfs, which are not stars. A brown dwarf is bigger than Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system, but too small to carry on the sustained nuclear reactions that are needed to become a true star.
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