Supergiants are massive stars with 10-70 solar masses, living fast and dying hard. Hypergiants are even more massive, but stars over 120 solar masses cannot exist. Supergiants have radii 30-500 times larger than the Sun and are found in young cosmic structures. The more massive a star, the shorter its lifetime and the more likely it is to collapse into a black hole.
Supergiants are stars with between 10 and 70 solar masses. They are among the most massive stars known, located at the top of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which maps the brightness of stars against spectral type. Like most other types of stars, supergiants come in all colors: red supergiants, blue supergiants, yellow supergiants, etc. They live fast (10-50 million years) and die hard (forming a black hole or neutron star after a supernova).
Stars even more massive than supergiants, in the range of 70 to 120 solar masses, are called hypergiants. Stars much more massive than 120 solar masses cannot exist because they disintegrate in nuclear reactions before they can fully form. The more massive a star, the more intense its solar wind and the more mass it loses. The short-lived and very massive Wolf-Rayet supergiant stars are the most intense cosmic geysers known, emitting 10-3% of their mass into the interstellar medium each year at speeds up to 2000 km/s.
Since they last only 10-50 million years, supergiants tend to be found in relatively young cosmic structures such as open clusters, the arms of spiral galaxies, and in irregular galaxies. They are rarely found in elliptical galaxies which mostly contain old stars. Our Sun, much less massive than a supergiant, is expected to have a total lifespan of about 9 billion years before transforming into a red giant, which is less massive than a supergiant but still very large in diameter.
Supergiants tend to have radii 30 to 500 times larger than the Sun, but sometimes even 1000 times larger and larger, as is the case with VY Canis Majoris and VV Cephei. In all, giant stars are separated into the categories of giant, supergiant, and hypergiant. Each has distinct paths of stellar evolution. The more massive a star, the shorter its lifetime and the more likely it is to eventually collapse into a black hole.
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