protostar
- noun
- /ˈproʊtəˌstɑr/
- Specialized
- We came to a stop a quarter million miles from the surface of the protostar.
Which is why molecular clouds always have some momentum, and that's why protostars spin.
- Which is why molecular clouds always have some momentum, and that's why protostars spin.
Examples
-
Accordingly, Adams computed a model of the development of a disk in a rotating protostar.
Academic text (1991) -
As the protostar gets hotter, sound speeds can rise to hundreds of kilometers per second.
Academic text (2011) -
The star in the process of formation, or protostar, continues to shrink and heat up.
Academic text (1991) -
The magnetic fields within the protostar grow incredibly complex as it collapses.
Fiction book (2000) -
Therefore, it made sense to search for infrared radiation from protostars.
Academic text (1991) -
Indeed, as a protostar slowly contracts and heats with time, the gas at its center becomes less and less opaque.
Academic text (1999) -
And as the protostar contracts further, this radiative region expands outward.
Academic text (1999) -
The protostar illuminates three distinct dusty, nebulous regions within its placental molecular cloud.
Academic text (1992) -
Simulations show high rates of accretion, and spherically symmetric models convincingly demonstrate that within 100 years, protostars will grow to have a solar mass confined to a region some hundreds of solar radii across.
Academic text (2011) -
The Hubble Space Telescope recently imaged a cluster of protostars within the Orion Nebula, highlighting their formation process.
Synonyms
A young star that is still forming in a cloud of gas
How Developed
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word protostar comes from the part proto- meaning 'first' or 'early' and the word star, so it literally means 'first star'. Think of a protostar as a 'prototype' of a star, a young star still forming from a cloud of gas and dust, which is why the word names a very young star.