High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–10 solar masses) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius immense and the surface temperature low, somewhere from 5,000 K and lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow orange to red, including the spectral types K and M, but also class S stars and most carbon stars.