How stars form: from nebulae to main-sequence stars

Stars are born in nebulae, cold, dense clouds of gas and dust made mostly of hydrogen, like the Orion Nebula. When a clump of a cloud becomes dense enough, gravity pulls it inward and it begins to collapse. As it contracts, it heats up and becomes a protostar, glowing from the energy released by its own contraction rather than from fusion, often surrounded by a spinning disk of gas and dust from which planets can later form. When the core finally reaches about 10 million kelvins, hydrogen fusion begins. The outward pressure from that energy balances gravity's inward pull, the star stops contracting, and it settles onto the main sequence, where it will spend most of its life.

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