  Nuclear structure data are of crucial importance in order to address
important astrophysical problems such as the origin of chemical elements, the
inner working of our Sun, and the evolution of stars. We demonstrate this by
investigating the ground state structure of $^8$B and $^7$Be nuclei within the
Skyrme Hartree-Fock framework and by calculating the overlap integral of $^8$B
and $^7$Be wave functions. The latter is used to calculate the astrophysical S
factor ($S_{17}$) for the solar fusion reaction $^{7}$Be($p, \gamma)^{8}$B.
