Red-giant branch the star when it reaches the horizontal branch, so the properties of red-clump stars can be used to determine the mass difference before and after the helium flash. Mass lost from red giants also determines the mass and properties of the white dwarfs that form subsequently. Estimates of total mass loss for stars that reach the tip of the red-giant branch are around . Most of this is lost within the final million years before the helium flash. Mass lost by more-massive stars that leave the red-giant branch before the helium flash is more difficult to measure directly. The current
A-type main-sequence star Doppler shifts induced by orbiting planets since the spectral lines are very broad. However, this type of massive star eventually evolves into a cooler red giant which rotates more slowly and thus can be measured using the radial velocity method. As of early 2011 about 30 Jupiter class planets have been found around evolved K-giant stars including Pollux, Gamma Cephei and Iota Draconis. Doppler surveys around a wide variety of stars indicate about 1 in 6 stars having twice the mass of the Sun are orbited by one or more Jupiter-sized planets, compared to about 1 in 16 for Sun-like