ExploraTour: A Peek into the Lives of the Stars
What Happens to Low Mass Stars (<8 Solar Masses)?
STAGE 4: White Dwarf
When the fuel is used up, there is nothing to hold the star's layers up against gravity and the star begins to collapse. Gravity squeezes the star down into a very small size.
As you might imagine, the matter that makes up a white dwarf is like nothing you've ever seen before. It's as if the mass of an elephant were compressed into the space of a marble. A 70 kg (154 lbs) person would weigh about 600,000 kg (600 metric tons) standing on the surface of a white dwarf.
As bizarre as they are, white dwarfs are very common objects in the Universe.