“Stars are much like humans. They are born, live their lives and die.” Ilgmars Eglitis, astronomer
Observing the spectra of stars allows us to look deep into their origin and characteristics. A large catalog of star spectra exists at Baldone Observatory in Latvia, which is being made available online this year.
In the picture above, each horizontal “line” is the raw spectrum of one star. These are investigated with simple graphical tools, allowing us to determine each stars characteristics, origin and evolutionary state.
More educational material will appear on these pages over time. So far, you can play with this Black Body radiation calculator.
Stars are born in huge clouds of gas and dust, such as those seen below in images obtained from the Faulkes Telescope Project.
The star formation region NGC 3372, imaged by a 0.4m telescope in the LCO global network. 
Star formation region M16, (Eagle Nebula), obtained with the 2m FT North telescope, operated by Las Cumbres Observatory.
Stars can die in a number of ways, but the more massive stars (maybe those 10 times or more massive than our Sun) explode in spectacular supernovae, such as those seen in the images below.
Image of supernova SN2011dh in the spiral galaxy M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy). 
A part of NGC 6992 (Veil nebula), a supernova remnant.