How to find cause for laptop crashing

[Mark Allen Sheely]

Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new to Linux, and could use some advice. Here's the problem:

Using Celestia (I'm sure some of you are familiar with it) causes my 
laptop to crash. What happens is that after using it for a few minutes, 
the screen goes blank, and then it slowly flickers between black and 
gray. After about a minute, the screen turns black and stays that way no 
matter what I do.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software, and get the same 
problem. I end up having to manually turn off and restart my laptop.

So, my question is: How do I find out what is causing this? Is there a 
way that I can see some kind of error message upon startup that can give 
me some sort of insight into why my laptop is crashing?

Thanks for the help,
Mark