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Westerhout 51 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]
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 A mass-radius plot ...
The SIR model (perhaps most popularly familiar in the form of Conway's Game of Life) is applied to star formation propagating through the galaxy: Each generation of stars in a neighborhood includes some massive ones whose stellar winds and, soon, supernovae, produce shock waves in the gas (Susceptible material).
During the merger, if there is enough gas, the increased gravity will force the gas to the centre of the forming elliptical galaxy. This may lead to a short period of intensive star formation called a starburst. [137] In addition, the infalling gas will feed the newly formed black hole, transforming it into an active galactic nucleus. The force ...
In astronomy, the initial mass function (IMF) is an empirical function that describes the initial distribution of masses for a population of stars during star formation. [1] IMF not only describes the formation and evolution of individual stars, it also serves as an important link that describes the formation and evolution of galaxies. [1]
French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to propose a model for the origin of the Solar System in his book The World, written from 1629 to 1633.. In his view, the universe was filled with vortices of swirling particles, and both the Sun and planets had condensed from a large vortex that had contracted, which he thought could explain the circular motion of the plane
Later in its life, a low-mass star will slowly eject its atmosphere via stellar wind, forming a planetary nebula, while a higher–mass star will eject mass via a sudden catastrophic event called a supernova. The term supernova nucleosynthesis is used to describe the creation of elements during the explosion of a massive star or white dwarf.
In astronomy, the Kennicutt–Schmidt law is an empirical relation between the surface gas density and star formation rate (SFR) in a given region. [1] The relation was first examined by Maarten Schmidt in a 1959 paper [2] where he proposed that the SFR surface density scales as some positive power of the local gas surface density. i.e.