Red-giant branch temperature and luminosity are very similar at the cool end of the horizontal branch. These stars form the red clump at about 5,000 K and . Less massive hydrogen envelopes cause the stars to take up a hotter and less luminous position on the horizontal branch, and this effect occurs more readily at low metallicity so that old metal-poor clusters show the most pronounced horizontal branches. Stars initially more massive than have non-degenerate helium cores on the red-giant branch. These stars become hot enough to start triple-alpha fusion before they reach the tip of the red-giant branch and before the
Fleming 1 a torus of expanding hot gas forming the inner bright ellipse. Fleming 1 is probably 5,000 years old. Like any other planetary nebula Fleming 1 was formed when an old asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star lost its outer hydrogen-rich envelope, leaving behind a hot core (young white dwarf)—the central star of the nebula. The star in the center of Fleming 1 has a temperature of and mass of 0.56 . Observations performed by European Southern Observatory showed that the central star is in fact a double degenerate (made of two white dwarfs) binary with a period of days. The companion