If starbirth is a process of light and fury, signifying the beginning of a new member of a galaxy, what then is star death?
More fury and light?

Possibly so, but just as humans take their leave of life in different ways, so too do stars. The manner of their dying depends largely on the size and mass they attained during their lives.

For smaller and medium-sized stars, the end stretches through millenia as the stellar gases sigh away to form brightly glowing shells surrounding the progenitor -- which itself has swollen to giant size. Eventually it contract to become white dwarf, and slowly fades away over millions of years.

Supergiants -- the superstars of the universe -- also breathe away their gases into surrounding space. And, they contract, as the other stars do. But, their ends come in cataclysmic fashion, expending giant amounts of masses in a violent outrushing phenomenon called a supernova.