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A stellar wind is a flow of neutral or charged gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflow
Bipolar outflow

A bipolar outflow represents two continuous flows of gas from the poles of a star. Bipolar outflows may be associated with protostars , or with evolved post-AGB stars ....
s characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric.

Different types
Stellar classification

In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on its spectrum characteristics. The spectral class of a star, is a designation of a class to a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excited states are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure of the temperature in this chr...
 of stars have different types of stellar winds.

Post-main sequence
Main sequence

The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appear on plots of stellar Color index versus brightness. These color-absolute magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell....
 star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
s nearing the ends of their lives often eject large quantities of mass in massive ( solar masses per year), slow winds.






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A stellar wind is a flow of neutral or charged gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflow
Bipolar outflow

A bipolar outflow represents two continuous flows of gas from the poles of a star. Bipolar outflows may be associated with protostars , or with evolved post-AGB stars ....
s characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric.

Different types
Stellar classification

In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on its spectrum characteristics. The spectral class of a star, is a designation of a class to a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excited states are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure of the temperature in this chr...
 of stars have different types of stellar winds.

Post-main sequence
Main sequence

The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appear on plots of stellar Color index versus brightness. These color-absolute magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell....
 star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
s nearing the ends of their lives often eject large quantities of mass in massive ( solar masses per year), slow winds. These include red giant
Red giant

A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass that is 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....
s and supergiants, and asymptotic giant branch
Asymptotic Giant Branch

The asymptotic giant branch is the region of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram populated by evolving low to medium-mass stars. This is a period of stellar evolution undertaken by all low to intermediate mass stars late in their life....
 stars. These winds are likely to be driven by radiation pressure
Radiation pressure

Radiation pressure is the pressure exerted upon any surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation. If absorbed, the pressure is the power flux density divided by the speed of light....
 on dust
Cosmic dust

Cosmic dust is a type of dust composed of particles in space which are a few molecules to 0.1 mm in size. Cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location; for example: intergalactic dust, interstellar dust , interplanetary dust and circumplanetary dust ....
 condensing in the upper atmosphere of the stars.

G stars like the Earth's
Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
 Sun
Sun

The Sun , a G V star, is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 98.6% of the Solar System's mass....
 have a wind driven by their hot, magnetized corona
Corona

A corona is a type of Plasma "celestial body's atmosphere" of the Sun or other celestial body, extending millions of kilometres into space, most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but also observable in a coronagraph....
. The Sun's wind is called the solar wind
Solar wind

The solar wind is a Electric current—a Plasma —ejected from the stellar atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 electron volt....
. These winds consist mostly of high-energy electrons and proton
Proton

The proton is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of +1 elementary charge. It is found in the nucleus of each atom but is also stable by itself and has a second identity as the hydrogen ion, H+....
s (about 1 keV) that are able to escape the star's gravity because of the high temperature
Temperature

In physics, temperature is a physical property of a Physical system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that feels hotter generally has the greater temperature....
 of the corona
Corona

A corona is a type of Plasma "celestial body's atmosphere" of the Sun or other celestial body, extending millions of kilometres into space, most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but also observable in a coronagraph....
.

Massive stars of types
Stellar classification

In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on its spectrum characteristics. The spectral class of a star, is a designation of a class to a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excited states are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure of the temperature in this chr...
 O and B have stellar winds with lower mass loss rates ( solar masses per year) but very high velocities . Such winds are driven by radiation pressure on the resonance absorption lines of heavy elements such as carbon and nitrogen. These high-energy stellar winds blow stellar wind bubble
Stellar wind bubble

Stellar wind bubble is the astronomy term usually used to describe a cavity light years across filled with hot gas blown into the interstellar medium by the high-velocity stellar wind from a single massive star of stellar classification O star or B V star....
s.

Although stellar winds from main sequence
Main sequence

The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appear on plots of stellar Color index versus brightness. These color-absolute magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell....
 star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
s do not strongly influence the evolution of the stars, during the later, post-main sequence phase, mass lost by stellar winds can decide the fate of the star. Many intermediate mass stars become white dwarf
White dwarf

A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a small star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. Because a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth, it is very density....
s at the ends of their lives rather than exploding as supernova
Supernova

A supernova is a Astronomy#Stellar astronomy explosion. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months....
e only because they lost enough mass in their winds.

See also

  • Solar wind
    Solar wind

    The solar wind is a Electric current—a Plasma —ejected from the stellar atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 electron volt....