Publisher's Synopsis
In 2016 the leading center of Russian ground-based observational astronomy, the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of the anniversary celebration, the Observatory organized a conference to discuss a broad range of topics related to the astrophysics of stars and star systems. The main idea of the meeting is reflected in its name: the life of a star from its birth (molecular cloud collapse) to death (supernova core collapse). --.
