What type of star is the most stable?

Question

What type of star has the most stable energy output, has the fewest "hiccups"?

Red dwarf stars live the longest, but are they as stable as our Sun?

Answer 1

Favorite Answer

I'm going to disagree with Thomas above; Red dwarf stars are the longest lived stars, and vary little in their core pressure and temperature while they're on the main sequence - which can be up to dozens to hundreds of billions of years.

The larger the star, the more quickly their time is spent on the main sequence, and the more likely the core pressure and temperature is likely to change while on the main sequence - so statistically, they are more likely to be unstable.

Answer 2

Probably a star with a similar mass to the Sun. While red dwarfs are the longest lived, the flares they erupt can change their luminosity a hundredfold in only a few minutes.

Now, the thing about flares on red dwarfs versus our own Sun isn't that they are more powerful than the Sun's own flare eruptions -- they are about the same strength, but that the Sun is so much more luminous than a red dwarf that the same intensity flare does not make the same impact on brightness that it does with a red dwarf.

Answer 3

Some red dwarfs are known to flare quite strongly, much more so than the Sun.

Answer 4

Red dwarfs, slow and steady, may last a trillion years.

Answer 5

Ceiphids