>everyone failing at identifying what stars are made of
Stars are little more than balls of hydrogen gas packed so tightly, they ionize into plasma and begin fusing. They are hotter and more dense closer to the core, where a majority of the fusion takes place, and may begin fusing larger atoms depending on the star's mass and its point in its life cycle. Sometimes, so much mass is present, that when the force of fusion slows, gravity collapses a star's core into various states of degenerate matter. Some stars, like white dwarfs and neutron stars are composed of smashed together atomic nuclei, or even smaller individual particles depending on the mass and force of collapse, and can no longer be classified as solid, liquid, gas, OR plasma. Also, some cores collapse SO hard, not even the tiniest of particles can resist being squeezed, and the entire core's mass is pressed into a singularity. A motherfucking black hole.
tl;dr: hydrogen plasma
