How Stars and Planets Form

Stars form out of the material in dark clouds of gas and dust in
interstellar space.    As the cloud collapses, the young "proto-star"
is initially unstable, sending out jets of high velocity gas that
eventually destroys cloud.  Surrounding these young stars are disks of
rotating material that may form a planetary system.  To date, more
than 150 planets have been found around other stars.  In this talk I
will explore the star and planet formation process in our Milky Way
galaxy and give an update on the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI) toward stars with known planetary systems.