For stars that are similar to the Sun, the end comes in stages. And each stage is triggered by changes in the star’s core.

The star is several hundred million years old – billions of years younger than the Sun. For most of its life, it “fused” hydrogen atoms in its core to make helium. When the hydrogen was gone, it began fusing hydrogen in a shell around the core. That made the star puff up, so it was classified as a red giant.

Now, it’s finished off the shell, so it’s fusing the helium in the core to make carbon and oxygen. This phase is generally lumped into the red-giant category. Technically, though, it has its own name: the red clump.

In a hundred million years or so, Diphda will have used up all the helium. The star isn’t massive enough to fuse the carbon and oxygen to make heavier elements. Without that energy, the core will collapse to about the size of Earth. It’ll be extremely hot, though, so it’ll blow away Diphda’s outer layers. For a while, the star will enter one more phase: a planetary nebula – a colorful cloud of gas and dust.

When the cloud disperses, only the dead core will remain: a white dwarf – the hot but tiny remnant of a star.

Cetus spreads across the southeastern quadrant of the sky at nightfall. Diphda is near its lower right corner, roughly a third of the way up the sky.

Script by Damond Benningfield