CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Stars ) Jump to: navigation , search For other uses, see Star (disambiguation) . A star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud . False-color imagery of the Sun , a G-type main-sequence star , the closest to Earth A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity . The nearest star to Earth is the Sun . Other stars, mostly in the Milky Way , are visible from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms , and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations . For at least a portion of its life, a ...