Article: Desperately seeking Kepler; cool stars - of which the sun is one - bring together solar and stellar astronomers in a fast-growing new field of study.

It seems to have started with starsports. Astronomers have been studying sunspots since about 1600, and have always supposed that other stars have similar features. About three years ago astronomers figured out how to draw pictures of starspots (SN: 7/17/82, p. 36). Other new observational possibilities arose. Suddenly, details of surface and internal dynamics of stars that were impossible to study years ago have become available. As a result, cool stars--those with surface temperatures of less than about 10,000 kelvins--are a hot topic.

Douglas S. Hall of Vanderbilt University's Dyer Observatory in Nashville, Tenn., compares this situation to that of ...

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