What are stars? Fiery, burning balls of gas in the sky

To the naked eye, stars are tiny specks of light decorating the earth’s sky.

Up close, each is a huge, burning ball of gas -- much like our sun -- moving through its own life cycle.

What kinds of stars have humans classified? Let’s learn about a few from NASA.

Yellow Dwarf

Our sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old Yellow Dwarf star. These kinds of stars are typically very big and very hot. This creates a large area around the star where life is possible — not too hot or too cold for water to exist.

It would take 1.3 million Earths to fill the volume of the sun. At its core, the sun is more than 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

But, with Earth about 93 million miles away, these are perfect conditions for life on this planet.

Orange Dwarf

Scientists consider Orange Dwarf stars to be one of the best stars for supporting advanced life.

These stars are smaller, and they burn slightly cooler than our sun. This means the area around Orange Dwarf stars that can support life is smaller, but it lasts longer.

Orange Dwarf stars have a longer lifespan than our sun. With the potential to support life for about 40 billion years — instead of our sun’s 10 billion — there’s lots of time for lifeforms to grow and evolve on planets that circle Orange Dwarf stars.

Red Drawf

Red Dwarf stars are even smaller and burn even cooler than Orange Dwarf stars. This means it’s possible only for life to exist much closer to the star — where you’d also be exposed to a huge amount of radiation.

Because planets that revolve around Red Dwarfs essentially live in a super hot oven, it’s very difficult for live to survive there.

These stars are very common, and can last for 100 billion years.