Web Extra: What makes stars tick?

Today, data from state-of-the-art missions like the Kepler space telescope, the Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits satellite, and the Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars project are providing scientists with unprecedented information about stellar interiors. But astronomers have been using other methods to better understand the stars in our sky for decades, and they’ve learned a lot about the life cycles of various types of stars and what makes them shine.