Stars have long lifespans that range from millions of years to hundreds of billions of years. But eventually all stars run out of fuel and die. When stars die, they can leave behind a white dwarf star, a neutron star, a black hole, or nothing but a bit of hot gas!
There have been a lot of discoveries in the field of stellar death in the last couple of years. In this talk I’ll introduce the main ideas behind white dwarf stars, neutron stars, black holes, and supernovae. Some of the recent observations of black holes and neutron stars include the first image of “the black hole’s shadow”, the measurements of colliding black holes and neutron stars, and observations of X-rays from binary systems containing a stellar corpse. I will provide a report on the most interesting stellar obituaries from the last couple of years, and explain what they tell us about how stars die, and how they change when they begin their new life as a black hole or neutron star.

The evolution of our Universe has been shaped by different eras since its early fast expansion, the Big-Bang. It has been a long way from a world with only light and elementary particles, to a world of galaxies, stars, atoms and molecules. In this presentation, we will travel through space and time and see how the stars have transformed the Universe, filling their surrounding with light, and allowing a wide variety of chemical elements to propagate in space. Billions of years of star-formation eventually led to the formation planetary system, just like ours, enabling life to emerge.