What is the difference between a figure environment compared to a figure* (figure star) environment

It is hard to search for this question since most search engines treat the * symbol somehow special, so sorry if that has been asked before.

So, basically, I just would like to know what the difference is between the following two latex snippets. The only difference is that one uses figure while to other one uses figure*:

\begin{figure*}    \centering    \includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{MyFig}    \caption{\label{fig:myfig}MyFig Caption.}\end{figure*}

and

\begin{figure}    \centering    \includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{MyFig}    \caption{\label{fig:myfig}MyFig Caption.}\end{figure}

Thank you!