1)    At the beginning of their development, stars are called “protostars”. At this stage they don’t burn fuel and emit light, but their mass progressively increases as dust and gas clump together in space. A true star is born then.

2)    Once a star has collected enough matter and is compressed, it starts to shine and becomes the star we know. (The star that has not reached this stage is called a brown dwarf, these unlucky stars remain dark balls of dust and gas instead of becoming glowing fireballs.)

3)    Stars grow larger as they grow old but burn with less radiance. These stars are named giant stars. The hottest and brightest ones are named blue giants. These stars burn the fastest but burn for several million years. The red giant is neither as energetic nor as bright when burning, and can live for billions of years because it consumes its fuel more slowly than the blue giant.

4)    Some stars reduce in size to become white dwarfs before they burn out entirely. Slowly cooling white dwarfs gradually become black dwarfs.

5)    The process in which larger stars vanish is more phenomenal. Instead of shrinking into a dwarf, they explode to form supernovae. As these enchantingly bright eruptions last only a few weeks and are so scarce, astronomers are thrilled to identify such an eruption.