Besides being a point of light, a star is a luminous, spherical mass of plasma, enough to hold itself together under its own gravity. On its own, though, gravitational rounding isn't enough. What ...

For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very first stars in the universe were like. These stars formed new chemical elements, which enriched the universe and allowed the next generations of ...

While our Sun prefers to go solo, many other stars are parts of binary systems, with a pair of stars gravitationally bound to each other. In some cases, the stars are far enough apart that planets can ...

Stars form in massive clouds of gas called molecular clouds. As they form, they accrete gas from these clouds, and as the stars rotate, gas and dust accumulates in a rotating disk around the star ...