This week, we begin a month-long exploration of the most familiar objects in the night sky, and wonder why they’re still so often misunderstood.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into what a star really is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. We’ll talk about how stars form, why they live such turbulent lives, how light escapes their interiors over immense spans of time, and why the stars we see from Earth are not representative of the galaxy as a whole.

Along the way, we’ll challenge common assumptions about color, brightness, and magnitude, explore the strange world of brown dwarves and “failed” stars, and reflect on why nearly everything around us exists because earlier generations of stars lived and died long before the Sun was born.

After the break, we turn our attention to the night sky for February 1st through the  ...