What Is Required to Make a Star?

We would love to see stars being formed and then watch them all the way through their age. But as you say, we don't have billions of years to get our graduate students across the pge d finish line. To look at stars at different stages of their evolution is part of what that's doing for us right? Ye. By looking at this cosmic nursery and seeing where stars are being formed and where they are not, also understanding the structures we're looking at, we can start to understand better what influences the conditions for star formation.