In this paper, we deal with the existence of local strong solution for a perfect compressible viscous fluid, heat conductive and self-gravitating, coupled with a first-order kinetics used in astrophysical hydrodynamical models. In our setting, the vacuum is allowed and as a byproduct of the existence result we get a blow-up criterion for the local strong solution. Moreover we prove a blow-up criterion for the local strong solutions in terms of the velocity gradient, the mass fraction gradient and the temperature similar to the well-known Beale–Kato–Majda criterion for ideal incompressible flows.