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Understanding the Context

A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. [1] The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. A star’s gas provides its fuel, and its mass determines how rapidly it runs through its supply, with lower-mass stars burning longer, dimmer, and cooler than very massive stars.

Key Insights

What is a star? A star is any massive self-luminous celestial body of gas that shines by radiation derived from its internal energy sources. Of the tens of billions of trillions of stars in the observable universe, only a very small percentage are visible to the naked eye. How does a star work? How do they form, live, and eventually die?

Final Thoughts

Learn more about these distant objects and their major importance in the universe. How are stars named? And what happens when they die? These star facts explain the science of the night sky.