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To help understand stellar evolution astronomers use the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram. This is a scatter plot of known stars that compares their luminosity or brightness to their temperature or color. Stars begin their lives has luminous blue stars in the upper right of the diagram and gradually transition to cool red stars. At the end of their lives they expand into giant stars or if conditions are right explode as supernovae leaving behind a white dwarf.

In the distant future the Sun will finish fusing all its hydrogen into helium growing into a red giant the size of the orbit of Venus and possibly Earth. The core will collapse suddenly converting about six percent of the hydrogen into carbon and then continue fusing helium into carbon. A long while later the sun will run out of helium and collapse into a white dwarf that gradually radiates away its energy until it becomes a black dwarf.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an infrared telescope design to detect light between 0.6 microns and 28 microns. Because infrared light waves are longer then visible light waves they can penetrate clouds of gas and dust that exist throughout the universe. Expectations are that James Webb will detect the first galaxies that formed up to 13.5 billion years ago.

Scientists are now (2021) testing the phenomenon of Pauli Blocking in which a collection of atoms are supercooled so all their lowest energy levels are filled. In this state it is thought that the collection would be unable to absorb light rendering it invisible.

Alas, a rare naked eye nova predicted for the year 2022 is not to be. Based on published data Larry Molnar's team at Calvin College predicted binary stars KIC 9832227 would merge producing a red nova. Unfortunately, a more recently uncovered typographical error in the published data negates the prediction.

Now that the James Web Space Telescope has entered its orbit around the Earth's L2 Lagrange point, the operations team has started the intricate processes of aligning its mirrors. For this process, expected to take two to three months, the team is using the near infrared camera and focusing on the star star HD-84406.

The Voyager 1 Probe now (2022) seems to be sending random data back to earth. A present the cause is unknown but the probe is still responding and there are several options for dealing with the anomaly.