<p>One nice resource is the <a href="https://rainman.astro.illinois.edu/ddr/stellar/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Digital demo room</a>. You can choose the masses of the stars, their metallicity, and it creates a movie where you can see the evolution of those stars in the HR diagram. It's completely online, no need to download anything.</p>
<p>If you are looking for something closer to research, you can download the <a href="https://ascl.net/1303.015" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SSE code</a> and run it from your computer. It is a rapid stellar evolution code. Today I'd say it's quite outdated, but many modern rapid population synthesis codes are still based on it. In the related paper <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000MNRAS.315..543H" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Hurley et al. 2000</a> you can find the actual formuale used to compute the evolution.</p>
<p>A step further would be to abandon the simple (and approximated) analytical formulae and solve the stellar fundamental equations directly, which you can do by downloading and running <a href="https://docs.mesastar.org/en/release-r22.05.1/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MESA</a>, a state-of-the-art 1D stellar evolution code, that is free, well documented and (arguably) user friendly. It will allow you to see the evolution of the star in the HR diagram, as well as the Kippenhan diagram of the interor of the star and the Temperature-density profile for any given time (and much, much more).</p>
<p>Each of these steps that I am suggesting is an order of magnitude more complex than the previous one, requiring more time to setup, to run and more advanced knowledge of how stars work to use properly and interpret the result.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T20:46:07.953Z
2022-07-27T20:46:07.953Z
Prallax
<p>HR diagrams for stars are available on the internet and it is also easy to plot this for thousands of stars from their absolute magnitude and color index values (obtainable from any catalog). However, we don't see many evolutionary tracks on HR diagram for a particular star. Even if we see one, that is probably a schematic diagram rather than a plot from data.</p>
<p>Is it not possible to plot the evolutionary track of a star given its mass, temperature, luminosity, etc? Is there any such software/packages where you can achieve this?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T18:48:38.043Z
Putting "stellar evolutionary tracks" into Google yields hundreds of examples
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T18:51:39.027Z
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stellaR/index.html
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T19:34:09.363Z
Most of the google results are schematic diagrams instead of numerical solution of an equation. I understand that it’s not possible to plot evolutionary track from the data because we don’t have such data for the whole life cycle of a star. But I am looking for some analytical method where I can input the mass and it would model the track on the HR diagram. I don't want to take chemical composition into account though now it seems to me that it’s impossible without taking the chemical composition into account.
Abdul Muhaymin -Free Palestine
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T19:40:43.920Z
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolutionary-tracks-in-the-HR-diagram-of-stellar-models-initially-rotating-with_fig4_270905678 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolutionary-tracks-for-non-rotating-stellar-models-at-solar-and-zero-metallicity-The_fig1_1801058/amp https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1410.1745/
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-27T19:52:34.377Z
Software https://isochrones.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stellaR/index.html
ProfRob
<stellar-evolution><hr-diagram>
Is there a general way to plot the evolutionary track of a star on HR diagram?
Abdul Muhaymin -Free Palestine
# Is there a general way to plot the evolutionary track of a star on HR diagram?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-07-27)

HR diagrams for stars are available on the internet and it is also easy to plot this for thousands of stars from their absolute magnitude and color index values (obtainable from any catalog). However, we don't see many evolutionary tracks on HR diagram for a particular star. Even if we see one, that is probably a schematic diagram rather than a plot from data.

Is it not possible to plot the evolutionary track of a star given its mass, temperature, luminosity, etc? Is there any such software/packages where you can achieve this?

**Tags:** stellar-evolution, hr-diagram

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Putting "stellar evolutionary tracks" into Google yields hundreds of examples  
> **username_1**: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stellaR/index.html  
> **username_0**: Most of the google results are schematic diagrams instead of numerical solution of an equation. I understand that it’s not possible to plot evolutionary track from the data because we don’t have such data for the whole life cycle of a star. But I am looking for some analytical method where I can input the mass and it would model the track on the HR diagram. I don't want to take chemical composition into account though now it seems to me that it’s impossible without taking the chemical composition into account.  
> **username_1**: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolutionary-tracks-in-the-HR-diagram-of-stellar-models-initially-rotating-with_fig4_270905678 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolutionary-tracks-for-non-rotating-stellar-models-at-solar-and-zero-metallicity-The_fig1_1801058/amp https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1410.1745/  
> **username_1**: Software https://isochrones.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stellaR/index.html  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2022-07-27. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

One nice resource is the [Digital demo room](https://rainman.astro.illinois.edu/ddr/stellar/). You can choose the masses of the stars, their metallicity, and it creates a movie where you can see the evolution of those stars in the HR diagram. It's completely online, no need to download anything.

If you are looking for something closer to research, you can download the [SSE code](https://ascl.net/1303.015) and run it from your computer. It is a rapid stellar evolution code. Today I'd say it's quite outdated, but many modern rapid population synthesis codes are still based on it. In the related paper [Hurley et al. 2000](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000MNRAS.315..543H) you can find the actual formuale used to compute the evolution.

A step further would be to abandon the simple (and approximated) analytical formulae and solve the stellar fundamental equations directly, which you can do by downloading and running [MESA](https://docs.mesastar.org/en/release-r22.05.1/), a state-of-the-art 1D stellar evolution code, that is free, well documented and (arguably) user friendly. It will allow you to see the evolution of the star in the HR diagram, as well as the Kippenhan diagram of the interor of the star and the Temperature-density profile for any given time (and much, much more).

Each of these steps that I am suggesting is an order of magnitude more complex than the previous one, requiring more time to setup, to run and more advanced knowledge of how stars work to use properly and interpret the result.


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