A giant star is a star with substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence star of the same surface temperature. Typically, giant stars have radii between 10 and 100 solar radii and luminosities between 10 and 1,000 times that of the Sun. Stars still more luminous than giants are referred to as supergiants and hypergiants. A hot, luminous main-sequence star may also be referred to as a giant. Apart from this, because of their large radii and luminosities, giant stars lie above the main sequence (luminosity class V in the Yerkes spectral classification) on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II or III.
Famous quotes containing the words giant and/or star:
“The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn’t ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“One year
They sent a million here:
Here men were drunk like water, burnt like wood.
The fat of good
And evil, the breast’s star of hope
Were rendered into soap.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)