Red giant brightness so common on both types of stars. Red giants are evolved from main-sequence stars with masses in the range from about to around . When a star initially forms from a collapsing molecular cloud in the interstellar medium, it contains primarily hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of "metals" (in stellar structure, this simply refers to "any" element that is not hydrogen or helium i.e. atomic number greater than 2). These elements are all uniformly mixed throughout the star. The star reaches the main sequence when the core reaches a temperature high enough to begin fusing hydrogen (a few
Giant star Stars still more luminous than giants are referred to as supergiants and hypergiants. A hot, luminous main-sequence star may also be referred to as a giant, but any main-sequence star is properly called a dwarf no matter how large and luminous it is. A star becomes a giant after all the hydrogen available for fusion at its core has been depleted and, as a result, leaves the main sequence. The behaviour of a post-main-sequence star depends largely on its mass. For a star with a mass above about 0.25 solar masses (), once the core is depleted of hydrogen it