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The gas is instead forced to spread outwards near its equatorial plane, forming a disk, which in turn accretes onto the core. [2] [39] [40] The core gradually grows in mass until it becomes a young hot protostar. [38] At this stage, the protostar and its disk are heavily obscured by the infalling envelope and are not directly observable. [16]
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 ]
Representative lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses The change in size with time of a Sun-like star Artist's depiction of the life cycle of a Sun-like star, starting as a main-sequence star at lower left then expanding through the subgiant and giant phases, until its outer envelope is expelled to form a planetary nebula at upper right Chart of stellar evolution
The collapse releases gravitational energy, which heats up the protostar. This process occurs on the free fall timescale, which is roughly 100,000 years for solar-mass protostars, and ends when the protostar reaches approximately 4000 K. This is known as the Hayashi boundary, and at this point, the protostar is on the Hayashi track.
The W51 nebula in Aquila - one of the largest star factories in the Milky Way (August 25, 2020). Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space, sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions", collapse and form stars. [1]
NGC 7538, near the more famous Bubble Nebula, is located in the constellation Cepheus. It is located about 9,100 light-years from Earth. It is home to the biggest yet discovered protostar which is about 300 times the size of the Solar System. [4] It is located in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way and is probably part of the Cassiopeia OB2 ...
The protostar at first only has about 1% of its final mass. But the envelope of the star continues to grow as infalling material is accreted. After 10,000–100,000 years, [1] thermonuclear fusion begins in its core, then a strong stellar wind is produced which stops the infall of new mass. The protostar is now considered a young star since its ...
The compact object that was created after the explosion lies in the center of the Crab Nebula and its core is now a neutron star. Still other nebulae form as planetary nebulae . This is the final stage of a low-mass star's life, like Earth's Sun. Stars with a mass up to 8–10 solar masses evolve into red giants and slowly lose their outer ...