Papal cross Papal cross The papal cross is a Christian cross, which serves as an emblem for the office of the Pope in ecclesiastical heraldry. It is depicted as a staff with three horizontal bars near the top, in diminishing order of length as the top is approached. The cross is thus analogous to the two-barred archiepiscopal cross used in heraldry to indicate an archbishop, and seems to have been used precisely to indicate an ecclesiastical rank still higher than that of archbishop. In the past, this design of the cross was often used in ecclesiastical heraldry as a distinctive mark of
Horizontal branch not horizontal when plotted by bolometric luminosity, with hotter horizontal branch stars being less luminous than cooler ones. The hottest horizontal-branch stars, referred to as extreme horizontal branch, have temperatures of 20,000–30,000K. This is far beyond what would be expected for a normal core helium burning star. Theories to explain these stars include binary interactions, and "late thermal pulses", where a thermal pulse that Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars experience regularly, occurs after fusion has ceased and the star has entered the superwind phase. These stars are "born again" with unusual properties. Despite the bizarre-sounding process, this is expected to