What will happen to a star when its supply of nuclear energy is exhausted? Will it collapse to a point and disappear from this Universe? Or, is there a new twist to the story?

In this book, the second volume of the series ‘The Present Revolution in Astronomy’ authored by G Srinivasan, the story of the life history of the stars is narrated in a lucid manner, with the necessary physics background developed in a systematic fashion. The first part deals with the great developments of the 1930s. This includes the great discovery by Chandrasekhar and the subsequent prediction of supernovae, neutron stars and black holes. The second part of the book is devoted to a discussion of the modern perspective of stellar evolution.

I know of no other book on the evolution of stars of a similar scope and breadth that is so accessible for undergraduate students.

E P J van den Heuvel
Professor of Astrophysics
University of Amsterdam, The Netherland

Listen to author's talk on Youtube

Foreword
Preface

Part 1: A Historical Perspective

Chapter 1   What Are the Stars?
Chapter 2   Stars in Their Youth
Chapter 3   White Dwarf Stars
Chapter 4   The Principles of Statistical Mechanics
Chapter 5   Fermi–Dirac Distribution
Chapter 6   Quantum Stars
Chapter 7   The Chandrasekhar Limit
Chapter 8   The Absurd Behaviour of Stars: Not All Stars Will Have Energy to Cool
Chapter 9   Guest Stars
Chapter 10   Supernovae, Neutron Stars and Black Holes

A Profile of Chandra

Part II: The Life History of Stars—A Modern Perspective

Chapter 11   To Burn or Not To Burn
Chapter 12   What Does the Future Hold for the Sun?
Chapter 13   Life History of Intermediate Mass Stars
Chapter 14   Diamonds in the Sky
Chapter 15   Exploding Stars

Epilogue
Suggested Reading
Index