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At the end of the new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Trailer we meet Star Lord's father:
Dad appears to be human. But Peter Quill's mother said in the first film that his father was a
"being made of pure light".
What race (species?) is Star Lord's father in the MCU?
The film informs us that Ego, Star Lord' father, is in fact what is known as a Celestial.
This is not an official quote from the script but am almost 99% sure it's accurate
Peter: A Celestial? Like a God?
Ego: Small 'g'.
Ego seems to find the need to distinguish between a God and a god.
The below passage describes the plot of the film and how the Character in the Film relates to his Comic counterpart.
Ego is not powerful himself, he needs an offspring to combine his powers with, so he can take over all the planets he has planted his "seedlings" to terraform and create extensions of himself.
Answer from before Film was released
From an interview with James Gunn, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, he reveals that Ego, Star Lord's father is not only a living planet, but also a God. He also states his reasons for choosing Ego to be Star Lord's father instead of J'Son, like in the comics. (Emphasis mine)
Gunn told io9 of why he chose Comic-Con to reveal the information. “And I think one of the things I impressed upon people early on is the identity of Quill’s father is not the big stunner in this movie. I’m not leading it all to Darth Vader being Luke’s father in the third act reveal.
This is really about the relationship between [Star-Lord] and his father, who happens to be a living planet, and his other father, Yondu, who is an abusive jerk. It’s about the dysfunctional family triad that those three characters have. That’s the center of the movie.”
“I didn’t like that in the comics J’Son is a king, and he also reeked very much of Star Wars, so I didn’t want that same sort of thing,” Gunn said. “I like the idea of Quill’s father being an ancient, cosmic, incredibly powerful being who, just like Rocket, has problems connecting to other people because [...] there’s nothing else like him. This character has a hard time connecting to other people because he’s a god who’s been alone for billions of years.”
James Gunn explains why Ego is Star Lord's Father
Gamora: You destroyed 1000 ships without even a suit, who can do that?
Ego: I'm what's known as a Celestial, sweetheart
Peter: Wait, a Celestial? As in a God?
Ego: With a small "g". At least on the days I have the modesty of Drax.
-Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2. [paraphrased]
In the movie, although Ego is apparently a Celestial, he has manifested himself as a living planet as well as a being of human form as he can manipulate matter around himself (or his consciousness):
and eventually by Peter Quill / Starlord as well,
as some sort of weaponised power source.
What exactly this "white light" is is unknown at this point, but it seems to me that it is Ego's actual consciousness itself. It has the power to create and to destroy, but is never stated exactly what the light or power source actually is.
What is a Celestial?
The Celestials (in the comics) are:
a star-faring race of humanoid aliens who possess untold cosmic power. Standing two thousand feet tall, the Celestials are clad in full body armor. No Earth being has ever seen what they look like beneath their armor or knows their origin.
-Celestials, Marvel Universe Wiki.
And are even similar within the MCU:
The Celestials were an ancient race of armored, humanoid beings with god-like powers.
-Celestials, Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki.
This is Eson the Searcher, from the flashback scene where The Collector explains the origins of the Power Stone to the Guardians in the Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 1 movie:
What about Ego?
Yeah, so then we have Ego, who looks nothing like the rest of the very few Celestials that we do know about, was born as some sort of single-cell organism who multiplied himself; both by manipulating matter around him to increase his own manifestation, as well as planting seeds on many worlds to multiply himself.
According to our resident Marvel expert, Thaddeus Howze:
... The pedigree of the Celestials overall is very rare. Few have been named and even fewer have been named and killed in the Marvel Universe.
-Which Celestial's head is "Knowhere"?, answer by Thaddeus Howze.
Ego says the he doesn't know where he came from, but at some point he just was, and that he'd spent millions of years looking for other life. Finally finding this other life he'd been looking for.
What concerns me is that
... there were once billions of Celestials in the universe and due to a conflict with another early developing race called the Aspirants and the release of a super-weapon called the Godkiller, millions of Celestials were destroyed. It is likely the origin of Knowhere is a remnant from that first conflict billions of years ago.
-Which Celestial's head is "Knowhere"?, answer by Thaddeus Howze.
So if there were billions of them:
Those are the questions that keep me up at night.
I may be nitpicking and due to the mysterious long-lost nature of the Celestials, it's convenient for the creators and writers to make things up as they go, and that we should take their word for it, but this particular point is just hard for me to reconcile.
*Note: This answer is true for the Marvel Comics Universe, which has a different canon than the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as pointed out by Edlothiad in their post.
The Marvel wiki does not specifically state Star Lord's Father's species (Called J'Son by the wiki), but it does say that he was born to the previous emperor of the Spartoi people, and that he himself was heir to the throne. This means he is most logically Spartoi.
J'Son as Emperor of Spartoi:
