Horizontal Branch - Relationship To The Red Clump

Relationship To The Red Clump

A related class of stars is the clump giants, those belonging to the so-called red clump, which are the relatively younger (and hence more massive) and usually more metal-rich population I counterparts to HB stars (which belong to population II). Both HB stars and clump giants are fusing helium to carbon in their cores, but differences in the structure of their outer layers result in the different types of stars having different radii, effective temperatures, and color. Since color index is the horizontal coordinate in a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the different types of star appear in different parts of the CMD despite their common energy source. In effect, the red clump represents one extreme of horizontal branch morphology: all the stars are at the red end of the horizontal branch, and may be difficult to distinguish from stars ascending the red giant branch for the first time.