Abstract
"New stars" disrupt the seeming invariance of the night sky. Their exploration has fascinated mankind for long time, but only in the last century we have made significant progress in understanding these cosmic explosions.
Our knowledge has increased dramatically in recent years thanks to data from automatic sky surveys. Today, we know that astronomical outbursts are among the most energetic processes in the universe, and that much of the heavier-than-carbon chemical elements have been produced by various star explosions.