Star

Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Realm / Physical / Universe / Planetary System / Star
—————————

star : a self-luminous gaseous spheroidal celestial body of great mass which produces energy by means of nuclear fusion reactions — Merriam-Webster See also OneLook

Thesaurus

Roget’s II (Thesaurus.com), Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, Visuwords

Encyclopedia

Star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, the brightest of which gained proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. However, most of the stars in the Universe, including all stars outside our galaxy, the Milky Way, are invisible to the naked eye from Earth. Indeed, most are invisible from Earth even through the most powerful telescopes. — Wikipedia

Star (Encyclopædia Britannica)

Star (COSMOS: The SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy)

———————–

Adventures

Explore related posts on Cosma …

Touch the Sun - Remember how Icarus wanted to touch the Sun, but met his demise instead? Well, scientists at NASA wanted to touch the Sun too, but unlike Icarus, they succeeded! Better yet, they are beginning to share what they learned by doing it! Before we get into all of that, let’s go back and start at the … Continue reading Touch the Sun

———————–

Inspiration

Hubble Skymap puts the night sky at your fingertips any time of day. Roam the Milky Way to find a selection of stars and nebulae as seen by Hubble. To explore the skymap, scroll, double click, or pinch/swipe to zoom in and out. Roll over an icon to see the object, click to zero in, and click again for a detailed view and a description. Drag the map to navigate. — Hubble Skymap (NASA Science)

Hubble Skymap (NASA Science)

Big Idea 8: We Are All Made of Stardust (Big Ideas in Astronomy, International Astronomical Union)

Talks about Stars (TED: Ideas Worth Spreading)
Articles about Stars (Big Think)

———————-

Innovation

Science

Space, But Messier (YouTube Channel)

Stars (NASA Science)
Life and Death of Stars Interactive (NASA’s Universe of Learning)

Stars Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)
Stars Theme Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)
Star Formation Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)
Life and Death of Star Videos (ViewSpace, Space Telescope Science Institute)

Life Cycle of Stars (Astrum, YouTube Playlist)

Stars (SciShow Space, YouTube Playlist)

Star Formation (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)

Stars (Lunar & Planetary Institute)

Stars (Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy, Wolfram Research)

Stars (Wolfram Alpha)
Star Clusters (Wolfram Alpha)
Star Charts (Wolfram Alpha)

Commerce

Buying Stars and Star Names (International Astonomical Union)
Naming of Astronomical Objects (International Astonomical Union)
Naming Stars (International Astronomical Union)

GSC-II (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy)
Guide Star Catalog (Wikipedia)

CNS3 – Gliese Catalog of Nearby Stars, 3rd Edition
Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars (Wikipedia)

————————–

Preservation

—————————

Participation

Education

NASA Goddard (YouTube Channel)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Official Website)

Stars (Imagine the Universe, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Stars (Cosmos4Kids)
Stars (Space Scoop)

Star Learning Resources (National Air and Space Museum)

Stars (Astronomy Center, ComPADRE)

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Course

Stars (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Low Mass Stars (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
White Dwarfs & Planetary Nebulae (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
High Mass Stars (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Neutron Stars (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Black Holes (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Binary and Multiple Stars (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)
Star Clusters (Crash Course Astronomy, YouTube Video)

Community

Organization

International Astronomical Union Division G – Stars and Stellar Physics
American Association of Variable Star Observers

News

Stars (Nova Research Highlights, American Astronomical Society)
Star Formation (Nova Research Highlights, American Astronomical Society)
Stellar Evolution (Nova Research Highlights, American Astronomical Society)

Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers

Stellar Astronomy (EurekaAlert, AAAS)
Stellar Astronomy (JSTOR)
Stellar Astronomy (NPR Archives)

Stars (Sky & Telescope)
Stars (Astronomy Magazine)

Stars (Science Daily)
Stars (Phys.org)

Recent News from Phys.org …

DESI-HVS1 is an old hypervelocity star ejected...
on May 1, 2026 at 2:00 pm
Chinese astronomers report the discovery of DESI-HVS1, which may be an old metal-poor hypervelocity star of galactic center origin. The finding, based on the data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and ESA's Gaia satellite, was detailed in a research paper published April 23 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Hunting the elusive Eta Aquariid meteors
on May 1, 2026 at 1:40 pm
Early May is a good time to watch for a powerful yet often elusive meteor shower, the annual Eta Aquariids. They're a prolific, yet often elusive for northern hemisphere observers. If skies are clear, watch for a strong annual meteor shower that's attained an almost mythical status: the May Eta Aquariids.
A better way to search for extraterrestrial...
on May 1, 2026 at 12:30 pm
When you're looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it helps to know what you're looking for and to go about it in the most efficient way. But work so far has generally not done so, writes Benjamin Zuckerman, an astrophysicist and emeritus professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
How do close binary stars form?
on May 1, 2026 at 11:00 am
Our sun is a bit of an outlier in the general stellar population. We typically think of stars as being solitary wanderers throughout the galaxy. But roughly half of sun-like stars are locked in with more than one companion star. If there are two, it's known as a "binary" system, but in many cases there are even more stars all collectively tied together by gravity.
Measurement of nuclear reactions at record-low...
on April 30, 2026 at 8:50 pm
An international research team has achieved an important milestone for astrophysics at GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt: In the CRYRING@ESR storage ring, scientists were able to measure nuclear reactions at extremely low energies for the first time, mirroring the conditions inside stars. This novel experimental approach lays the foundation for decoding the formation of elements in the universe with even greater precision in the future.