Star

A star is an astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own
gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but
due to their immense distance from Earth they appear as fixed points of light in the sky.

A star's life cycle is determined by its mass. ... As the main

sequence star glows, hydrogen in its core is converted into helium by nuclear fusion. When the
hydrogen supply in the core begins to run out, and the star is no longer generating heat by nuclear
fusion, the core becomes unstable and contracts. The formation of a star begins with gravitational
instability within a molecular cloud, caused by regions of higher density—often triggered by
compression of clouds by radiation from massive stars, expanding bubbles in the interstellar medium,
the collision of different molecular clouds, or the collision of galaxies (as in a starburst galaxy).[58][59]
When a region reaches a sufficient density of matter to satisfy the criteria for Jeans instability, it begins
to collapse under its own gravitational force.[60]

Black hole

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even
electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.

Neutron star

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10
and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich.

Protostar

A protostar is a very young star that is still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. The
protostellar phase is the earliest one in the process of stellar evolution