from dust to stars studies of the formation and early evolution of stars

[...]... less Stars burn about 10% of their hydrogen and as a rule of thumb one can estimate the lifetime of stars by: tlif e = 7.3 × 109 M/M yr L/L (2.2) 2.2 The Quest to Understand the Formation of Stars 21 where M and and L are the mass and luminosity of the Sun and M and L the same for the star [858] Clearly, this development put an end to the perception that the Draper classification could resemble an evolutionary... On the one hand, it is necessary to understand the underlying physics to be able to properly describe the manifold of different processes involved On the other hand there is a story to tell about the current views on star formation and the effort and resources required in the course of research In this respect, the reader will find most of the needed basic physics and other information condensed into... reader to some basic facts of modern physics and astronomy, the emphasis of this chapter is not a substitute for introductory textbooks on physics and astronomy The chapter resembles more an investigation of the developments and scientific milestones that led to the pursuit of modern star formation studies 2.1.1 From Ptolemy to Newton It took humankind until the dawn of the New Age to put basic pieces together... concepts of Aristotle (384 BC), a student of Plato In his work ‘Hypotheses of the Planets’ Ptolemy describes a system of the worlds where Earth as a sphere reigns at the very center of a concentric system of eight spheres containing the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn The eighth and last sphere belonged to the stars They all had the same distance from earth and were fixed to the. .. planets and ultimately the birth of the Solar System From Dust to Stars introduces the reader to a world of dense clouds and cores, stellar nurseries, the lives of young stellar objects and their interaction with the interstellar medium as we know it today It attempts to provide a broad overview of the major topics in star formation and early stellar evolution The book describes the complex physical... in that they revealed a spiral nature It was not until after the turn of the 2.2 The Quest to Understand the Formation of Stars 17 century that in 1936 E Hubble’s book The Realm of the Nebulae finally put an end to the discussion about the nature of the nebulae In the 19th century only one reference to stellar formation can be found which involves gravitation and thermal physics and this is the attempt... E E Barnard and many others shaped the perception of what is today referred to as the interstellar medium (see Chap 3) In the end it was Eddington who basically formulated the right idea, that the age of the Sun must be scaled by the ages of the oldest known sedimentary rocks and the main source of the star’s energy must be subatomic The formulation of thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen as the main energy... that the color index is a good indicator of the color and thus the temperature of a star The use of photoelectric devices to perform photometry was first pursued in the early 20th century [727, 324, 812] The UBV-band system developed in 1951 [433] determines magnitudes in three color bands, the ultraviolet band (U, ∼ 3500 ˚), the blue band (B, ∼ 4000 A ˚), and the visual band (V, ∼ 5500 ˚) Today photomultipliers... pieces together and to accept proof over belief and superstition The geocentric concept of Claudius Ptolemaeus, or Ptolemy, dominated the views of the world from ancient times to the 16th century He walked the Earth approximately between the years 175 and 100 BC and, although he lived in the Egyptian city Alexandria, he was more a scientist of hellenistic origin and many of his views are based on the cosmological... for the physical mechanisms of the formation and early evolution of stars Biblical records leave no doubt that the world was created by God in six days and the formation of the Sun and stars was a hard day’s job Allegorically speaking there is nothing wrong with that unless the attempt is made to match these biblical timescales with physically observed time spans Then timescales from thousands to millions . y0 w1 h0" alt="" From Dust to Stars Studies of the Formation and Early Evolution of Stars Norbert S. Schulz From Dust to Stars Studies of the Formation and Early Evolution of Stars Published in. about the origins of stars and planets and ultimately the birth of the Solar System. From Dust to Stars introduces the reader to a world of dense clouds and cores, stellar nurseries, the lives of. attempt is made to relate the early history of our Sun and the Solar System to the current knowledge of star formation and early evolution by investigating the TTauriheritage of the Sun. Last but