Fifth European Summer School on Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics : Santa Tecla, Sicily, Italy, 20-27 September 2009

Nuclear astrophysics plays a key role for understanding energy production in stars, stellar evolution and the concurrent synthesis of the chemical elements and their isotopes. The 'bone structure' for the above aspects is based on nuclear reactions, whose rates need to be determined in laboratories. Although impressive progress has been made over the past decades, several open questions are still unsolved, which challenge the basis of the present understanding.