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v. t. e. A protostar is a very young star that is still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. It is the earliest phase in the process of stellar evolution. [1] For a low-mass star (i.e. that of the Sun or lower), it lasts about 500,000 years. [2] The phase begins when a molecular cloud fragment first collapses under the force of self ...
- Stellar Evolution
- The Fate of Medium-Sized Stars
- The Fate of Massive Stars
A star is born, lives, and dies, much like everything else in nature. Using observations of stars in all phases of their lives, astronomers have constructed a lifecycle that all stars appear to go through. The fate and life of a star depends primarily on it's mass. All stars begin their lives from the collapse of material in a giant molecular cloud...
When a medium-sized star (up to about 7 times the mass of the Sun) reaches the red giant phase of its life, the core will have enough heat and pressure to cause helium to fuse into carbon, giving the core a brief reprieve from its collapse. Once the helium in the core is gone, the star will shed most of its mass, forming a cloud of material called ...
A red giant star with more than 7 times the mass of the Sun is fated for a more spectacular ending. These high-mass stars go through some of the same steps as the medium-mass stars. First, the outer layers swell out into a giant star, but even bigger, forming a red supergiant. Next, the core starts to shrink, becoming very hot and dense. Then, fusi...
A protostar looks like a star but its core is not yet hot enough for fusion to take place. The luminosity comes exclusively from the heating of the protostar as it contracts. Protostars are usually surrounded by dust, which blocks the light that they emit, so they are difficult to observe in the visible spectrum.
When they reach 100–200 K, the bulk water ice sublimates, and most of the organic ice will co-desorb resulting in a hot, organic-rich core, i.e. a hot corino, since we are here interested in a Solar-like protostar. Hot corinos are observationally characterized by dense spectra at millimeter wavelengths due to the large abundances of warm, mid ...
A high-mass star goes further. Fusion converts carbon into heavier elements like oxygen, neon, and magnesium, which will become future fuel for the core. For the largest stars, this chain continues until silicon fuses into iron. These processes produce energy that keeps the core from collapsing, but each new fuel buys it less and less time.
Dec 29, 2021 · A Hubble Space Telescope image captures a portion of the reflection nebula IC 2631, which contains a protostar, the hot, dense core of a forming star that is accumulating gas and dust. .
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Nov 16, 2022 · Its shape, while mostly spherical, is also unstable, taking the form of a small, hot, and puffy clump of gas somewhere between 20 and 40% the mass of our Sun. As the protostar continues to gather mass, its core gradually compresses and gets closer to stable nuclear fusion. The scene shown in this image reveals L1527 doing just that.
