Red Giant

A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses (M_☉)) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius immense and the surface temperature low, somewhere from 5,000 K and lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-orange to red, including the spectral types K and M, but also class S stars and most carbon stars.

The most common red giants are the so-called red-giant-branch (RGB) stars whose shells are still fusing hydrogen into helium in a shell surrounding a degenerate helium core. Other red giants are: the red clump stars in the cool half of the horizontal branch, fusing helium into carbon in their cores via the triple-alpha process; and the asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) stars burning a helium shell outside a degenerate carbon–oxygen core, and sometimes also a hydrogen shell closer to the surface of the star.

The nearest red giant is Gamma Crucis, 88 light years away, but the orange giant Arcturus is described by some as a red giant and it is 36 light years away.