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-gravity and an opaque, pressure-supported core forms inside the collapsing fragment. It ends when the infalling gas is depleted, leaving a pre-main-sequence star, which contracts to later become a main-sequence star at the onset of hydrogen fusion producing helium.
^Stahler, S. W. & Palla, F. (2004). The Formation of Stars. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. ISBN 3-527-40559-3.
^Dunham, M. M.; et al. (2014). The Evolution of Protostars in Protostars and Planets VI. University of Arizona Press. arXiv:1401.1809. doi:10.2458/azu_uapress_9780816531240-ch009. ISBN 9780816598762. S2CID 89604015.
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...
clouds (GMC) as precursors to the star formation process, and the study of protostars and young stellar objects as its immediate products. It is closely related...
ProtoStar Ltd was a private company incorporated in Bermuda, with U.S. operations based in San Francisco, California and Asian operations based in Singapore...
the USS Dauntless in Star Trek: Prodigy, searching for the missing USS Protostar which was being commanded by Captain Chakotay, her former first officer...
383 is a Class 0 protostar. It is the first Class 0 protostar discovered to have had an outburst, and as of 2020, the youngest protostar known to have had...
nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, becoming what is known as a main-sequence...
core gradually grows in mass until it becomes a young hot protostar. At this stage, the protostar and its disk are heavily obscured by the infalling envelope...
diameter of roughly 200 AU (30 billion km; 19 billion mi) and a hot, dense protostar at the center. The planets formed by accretion from this disc, in which...
groups of objects: protostars and pre-main-sequence stars. A star forms by accumulation of material that falls in to a protostar from a circumstellar...
that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual...
(WISE) have been particularly effective at unveiling numerous galactic protostars and their host star clusters. With the exception of infrared wavelengths...
starship USS Voyager, and later promoted to Captain in command of the USS Protostar in Star Trek: Prodigy. The character was suggested at an early stage of...
Stellar evolution Variable star Compact star By luminosity / evolution Protostar Young stellar object Pre-main-sequence Main sequence Subdwarfs Subgiants...
might have been early in its formation a protostar system with Jupiter being the second but failed protostar, but Jupiter has far too little mass to trigger...
that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. There are eight planets within the Solar...
gas from the poles of a star. Bipolar outflows may be associated with protostars (young, forming stars), or with evolved post-AGB stars (often in the form...
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