Is the star Polaris high mass or low mass?

Answer 1

I'm convinced that this is how a lot of wars start ... people talking to each other

using words that mean different things to different people.

You're talking 'high' and 'low', which are certainly relative words at best, without

mentioning anything else that might tell us what you're thinking of to compare to.

Compared to you or me, or either of my dogs, or a car, or a continent, or the whole

Earth, the star Polaris is certainly an enormous mass.

Compared to any stable black hole, Polaris is a tiny mass. It doesn't even have

enough mass to ever become a black hole when it's done shining.

Polaris is estimated as six (6) solar masses. That's more massive than most

main-sequence stars, less massive than the majority of high-mass stars, and

roughly the mass of our sun six times over.

-- Compared to anything but stars, the mass of Polaris is huge.

-- Compared to the mass of other stars, Polaris is somewhat above average,

but probably not to the point where you'd need to call it especially high or

especially low.

Edit: A lot of this is missing the point. The terms "high mass" and "low mass"

are technical terms used by astronomers.

Astronomers can define what is meant.

There is no exact definition, but a high mass star is normally considered to be one that will eventually become a "Type II Supernova". That requires a mass at least 8 times the Sun's mass.

In that case, Polaris is clearly not a "high mass" star, according to the definition.

However, it's probably best to call Polaris a "medium" or "intermediate" mass star rather than a "low mass" star.

Note: A slight complication is that Polaris is a triple star system. I assume we are talking about the main star in this system.