You searched for:
“protostar”
protostar
1. A contracting gas cloud in the embryonic of beginning stage of a star formation before the onset or beginning of thermonuclear reactions in its interior.
2. A celestial object made of a contracting cloud of interstellar medium (mostly hydrogen gas) which eventually becomes a main-sequence star.
2. A celestial object made of a contracting cloud of interstellar medium (mostly hydrogen gas) which eventually becomes a main-sequence star.
Less massive protostars may take hundres of millions of years to evolve into stars; massive ones contract more quickly and may take only a few hundred thousand years to evolve.
This entry is located in the following units:
-plegia, -pleg, -plegic, -plegy, plego-, pleg-
(page 3)
procto-, proct-
(page 3)
proto-, prot- +
(page 5)
Word Entries at Get Words:
“protostar”
protostar, protostars
The stage in the evolution of a star between fragmentation and the zero age main sequence state, where nuclear reactions begin.
Stars are believed to be born in groups from the collapse of large, cold clouds of interstellar material composed primarily of hydrogen gas.
A protostar becomes a proper star when it begins fusing hydrogen into helium in its core. A star of one solar mass fuses its hydrogen for about ten billion years.
According to this analysis, the sun, which is about 4.6 billion years old, is a middle-aged star.
This entry is located in the following unit:
Astronomy and related astronomical terms
(page 20)