Red Dwarf Characteristics
Red dwarfs are the smallest, coolest, and most common type of star. Estimates of their abundance range from 70% to more than 90% of all stars in elliptical galaxies, an often quoted median figure being 73%. Red dwarfs are either late K or M spectral type. Given their low energy output, red dwarfs are never visible by the unaided eye from Earth; neither the closest red dwarf star to the Sun when viewed individually, Proxima Centauri (which is also the closest star to the Sun), nor the closest solitary red dwarf, Barnard's star, is anywhere near visual magnitude.
Read more about this topic: Habitability Of Red Dwarf Systems
Famous quotes containing the words red and/or dwarf:
“What journeyings on foot and on horseback through the wilderness, to preach the gospel to these minks and muskrats! who first, no doubt, listened with their red ears out of a natural hospitality and courtesy, and afterward from curiosity or even interest, till at length there “were praying Indians,” and, as the General Court wrote to Cromwell, the “work is brought to this perfection that some of the Indians themselves can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When I lie down to love,
old dwarf heart shakes her head.
Like an imbecile she was born old.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)