Question: How are stars made

Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:

I’m not an expert on this but I can give you a general idea 🙂 Stars basically form from clouds of gas and dust collapsing – gravity pulls the gas and dust into the centre of the cloud. This forms what is called a protostar and as it gets bigger it pulls more and more of the dust and gas in and it heats up. Once it’s big and hot enough, nuclear fusion starts to happen and it’s a star!

Some of the most spectacular famous astronomy images like the Hubble Space Telescope picture of the “Pillars of Creation” are of areas where stars are forming. If you want to know more I would suggest you look somewhere like the NASA websites (eg http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/how-do-stars-form-and-evolve/) or Universe Today (http://www.universetoday.com/24190/how-does-a-star-form/) or the BBC have a video clip with Brian Cox (http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/how-do-stars-form/9789.html).