The Birth Of A Star And Its Planets

Compare:

In The Coal Sack Nebula (on the James Blish Appreciation blog)
The Sky Cave As Seen From Within (on this blog)

The infra-sun is a broad, blurred, deep crimson disc, streaked with sable spots and bands, hazing into delicate coronal arabesques, shining as yet only by gravitational energy but heating as it contracts, its core density approaching quantum collapse. In a few million years, atomic processes will begin. Gravitation, magnetism and spin bring together orbiting stones which are then united by condensing ice and hydrocarbons. Meteoric motes or mountains descend on a forming nucleus.

Poul Anderson conveys the drama of cosmic events which I try to condense further here.