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For pure theatrics and spectacle, Hollywood celebrities have nothing on the denizens of the heavens. Stars are born, live and die in fiery and fascinating ways--ways that we have only recently been able to study in greater detail, like so many swarming paparazzi, using the long-range lenses created by improved techniques and new, sharper observatories.

In this special edition from Scientific American, we invite you to forget about everyday life to spend some time with the stars. In the pages that follow, you�ll find the latest gossip on the glitterati, written by the astronomer shutterbugs themselves.--The Editors

The First Stars in the Universe by Richard B. Larson and Volker Bromm
Exceptionally massive and bright, the earliest stars changed the course of cosmic history

Fountains of Youth: Early Days in the Life of a Star by Thomas P. Ray
To make a star, gas and dust must fall inward. So why do astronomers see stuff streaming outward?

Companions to Young Stars by Alan P. Boss
The surprising finding that even the youngest stars commonly exist in sets of two or three has revised thinking about the birth of star systems

The Discovery of Brown Dwarfs by Gibor Basri
Less massive than stars but more massive than planets, brown dwarfs were long assumed to be rare. New sky surveys, however, show that the objects may be as common as stars

The Stellar Dynamo by Elizabeth Nesme-Ribes, Sallie L. Baliunas and Dmitry Sokoloff
Sunspot cycles--on other stars--are helping astronomers study the sun's variations and the ways they might affect Earth

The Fury of Solar Storms by James L. Burch
Shock waves from the sun can endanger Earth's satellites and astronauts

When Stars Collide by Michael Shara
When two stars smash into each other, it can be a very pretty sight. Once considered impossible, these occurrences have turned out to be common in certain galactic neighborhoods

X-ray Binaries by Edward P. J. van den Heuvel and Jan van Paradijs
When ultradense neutron stars feed on their more sedate companions, the binary systems produce outpourings of x-rays and drastically alter the evolution of both stars

Magnetars by Chryssa Kouveliotou, Robert C. Duncan and Christopher Thompson
Magnetized so intensely, some stars alter the very nature of the quantum vacuum

Supersoft X-ray Stars and Supernovae by Peter Kahabka, Edward P. J. van den Heuvel and Saul A. Rappaport
Supersoft sources--which spew unusually low--energy x-rays-are now thought to be white dwarf stars that siphon matter from their stellar companions and then, in many cases, explode

Binary Neutron Stars by Tsvi Piran
The inevitable collapse of these paired stellar remnants generates runaway heating that, for a few weeks, emits more light than an entire galaxy

The Brightest Explosions in the Universe by Neil Gehrels, Luigi Piro and Peter J. T. Leonard
Every time a gamma-ray burst goes off, a black hole is born