Journey to the Stars The Sun as a red giant at the Hayden Planetarium.

Young stars forming from a giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust, in “Journey to the Stars,” at the Hayden Planetarium.

Stars are the meat and potatoes of astronomy and cosmology.

Everything we know about the universe depends on a remarkably intimate and hard-won knowledge of how they shine, age and die. They have defined the night for generations, and provided our ancestors with the first hints of a regularity in nature that has haunted scientists and thinkers for thousands of years.