A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Other stars are visible from Earth during the night when they are not outshone by the Sun or blocked by atmospheric phenomena. Historically, the most prominent stars on the celestial sphere were grouped together 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.

The geometric representation of a star, referred to as a star polygon, is also included in this tag. Stars that fall under the definition of a star polygon include pentagrams, and hexagrams, and their solid shape counterparts.

Living examples of stars, at least in the sense that they have eyes tend to resemble star polygons mainly due to the fact that depicting a more naturalized form of a star makes a character fit better in the sun category than the star category.

Not to be confused with

• sparkles - The concave diamond shape that represents most sparkles should only be treated as a star if it is a representation of one such as in a starry sky backdrop. Sparkles should not be considered a star polygon. A very specific exception to this rule is with star_eyes / star_pupils, tags in which concave diamonds are treated as stars, instead of sparkles.

See also

• moon
• shooting_star - This actually refers to a meteorite.
• sparkles
• sun