Stars are born in the dust clouds and swirling winds of our atmosphere. The turbulence within these clouds creates enough gravitational force between the gas and the dust that it begins to collapse on itself and becomes denser and hotter further into the cloud. The cloud continues to collapse, collecting dust and gas around the hot center called a protostar. (http://science.nationalgeographic.com) Protostars are not hot enough to emit visible light in their early stages, but do emit infrared. In their later stages, protostars emit more visible light, but images taken with visible-light telescopes have difficulty seeing beyond the large masses of dust around the stars, if they are not very bright. (http://coolcosmos.ipac. caltech.edu) Stars the size of our sun are estimated to mature over a period of about 50 million years, from the initial collapse of the clouds to the adulthood. Our sun is expected to remain in this mature phase for about 10 billion years, and is estimated to be in the middle of its lifespan. Stars are born from nuclear fusions of hydrogen; forming helium deep within them. The energy moves outwards, giving the entity enough resistance to the pressure of collapsing under its own weight and causing it to glow. Some stars shine dimly and others shine brighter or hotter than the sun. Red dwarfs are the smallest stars and shine for tens of billions of years. Hypergiants, the largest stars in the known universe, are at least a hundred times larger than our sun and emit hundreds of thousands of times more energy. That said, their lifespan is only about a few million years, which is much shorter than the estimated lifespan of our sun. Hypergiants were believed to be common in the early universe, but they are... middle of paper ...... more distant. The stars are what we will always seek. cosmic_classroom/cosmic_reference/starform.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/05/130529-how-stars-die-sodium-space-astronomy-science/ http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science /space/universe/stars-article/ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/ http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeedu/kstars/ai-colorandtemp.html http http://www.bobthealien.co.uk/stardiff.htm http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/home. html http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/supernovae.html http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/star_intro.htmlhttp://www-istp.gsfc.nasa. gov /istp/outreach/workshop/thompson/facts.html