Benjamin Dean Lecture: Why Are There Stars?

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains one hundred billion stars and continues to form them today, some relatively near us. While nature clearly has no difficulty making these objects, astronomers have long struggled to understand this fundamental process. Stahler will describe the great strides we have made in understanding the process of star formation as a result of both improved observations and basic theoretical insights that have been developed in the past two decades. While mysteries remain, we now see how a star like our own Sun comes into existence.

Speaker: Dr. Steven W. Stahler , Dept. of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley