Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. What is the bright white star in the east right now?

The very long lives of our Sun, or any star, hinges on a delicate balance of forces.

The sun is the biggest object in the solar system; at about 865,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) across, it's more than 100 times wider than Earth. Despite being enormous, our star is often called a ...

It’s “common knowledge”—and the scare quotes should be a warning—that the sun is an average star. But it’s not, and in fact it’s not even close: The sun is in the top 90th percentile of stars by mass.

For decades, astronomers have been watching WOH G64, an enormous heavyweight star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. This star is more ...