Wonderful post and picture. I have a quick question. We all know that the sun is a star, but like all other starts will it eventually explode or will it just stay like that forever?

The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead, in 4–5 billion years, it will enter a red giant phase, its outer layers expanding as the hydrogen fuel in the core is consumed and the core contracts and heats up. Helium fusion will begin when the core temperature reaches around 100 MK, and will produce carbon and oxygen, entering the asymptotic giant branch of a planetary nebula phase in about 7.8 billion years, during which instabilities in interior temperature lead the surface of the sun to shed mass. While it is likely that the expansion of the outer layers of the Sun will reach the current position of Earth's orbit, recent research suggests that mass lost from the Sun earlier in its red giant phase will cause the Earth's orbit to move further out, preventing it from being engulfed. However, Earth's water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere will escape into space. The increase in solar temperatures over this period is sufficient that by about 500-700 million years into the future, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for the survival of life as we know it.

Following the red giant phase, intense thermal pulsations will cause the Sun to throw off its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula. The only object that will remain after the outer layers are ejected is the extremely hot stellar core, which will slowly cool and fade as a white dwarf over many billions of years. This stellar evolution scenario is typical of low- to medium-mass stars.

Norman