How Stars Die (Including the One That Keeps Us Alive)

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder · Feb 22, 2026 · 22m · transcript

In this episode, we wrap up our month-long series on stars by exploring their final acts.Most stars don’t explode. They grow old. We’ll follow the Sun’s future as it swells into a red giant, sheds its outer layers, and becomes a dense white dwarf held up not by heat, but by quantum mechanics itself. Along the way, we’ll examine planetary nebulae like the Ring Nebula and the Dumbbell Nebula, and look at real red giants such as Betelgeuse and Aldebaran that foreshadow stellar endings.Then we turn to the massive stars — the ones that collapse, detonate as supernovae, leave behind neutron stars…