Serious #astronomy question for needlessly over-detailed #scifi worldbuilding.
What distribution of star types might we reasonably expect for the suns of planets that people might want to land on? What are the relevant parameters?
Overall abundance of different types would certainly be the main factor. But do different types have different effects on planet formation? Are some times more likely to abundant in heavy elements that make them interesting and valuable?
Is there any kind of correlation between star size and heavier elements (say, past iron) within the galaxy?
Red dwarfs can be extremely old, while all giants must have formed very recent. As recently formed stars, giant stars should be more likely to also produce planets with more varied chemical compositions, right?
But with red dwarfs being vastly more common than giants, would such planets still be most often orbiting red dwarfs?
I would assume that the older the star, the more of the heavier materials it'll contain. They burn their lighter gasses over time until the big boom at the end, iirc.
@lucifargundam Yes, but those fused atoms are then trapped in the core. And the fusion only creates elements up to iron.
All the elements heavier than that are only produced when they explode as a supernova, or when the remaining neutron stars then collide with each other and explode again.
These heavy atoms that are created fly off into space where they become the material for future generations of planets to form from.