MOLECULAR CLOUDS & STAR FORMATION: stellar nurseries, cloud collapse, protostar formation, dust chemistry, stellar winds reading comprehension passages. What if vast cosmic clouds of gas and dust birthed every star we see in the night sky? Students explore how molecular clouds collapse under gravity, fragment into dense cores, and ignite nuclear fusion through protostar stages. They uncover dust's shielding role, chemistry shifts from temperature and pressure, plus winds that clear remnants to