Massive pre-stellar core collapse (2D) - Volume Rendering

The movie illustrates a high-resolution radiation hydrodynamics simulation of the collapse of a pre-stellar core of cold gas and dust of 120 solar masses. In the center of the core, a new star is born during the free-fall epoch of the collapsing core. Afterwards the newborn star gains further mass from an accretion disk, which formed due to angular momentum conservation from the initially slowly rotating core. After some while, the luminosity of the massive star has increased so much, that the resulting radiation pressure drags the in-falling mass from the bipolar direction into outer space. The concentrated opaque density of the accretion disk hampers the radiation pressure in this midplane layer at this point in time. Not until the accretion from the envelope region onto the disk has sufficiently decreased, the accretion disk looses its opaqueness and without this shielding effect the radiation pressure of the star starts to clear also the midplane layer. In the end, the final star has accreted approximately 56.5 solar masses.

For more details and scientific background, please visit: http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/~kuiper

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• massive
• star
• formation
• pre-stellar
• core
• collapse
• accretion
• disk
• outflow
• jet
• radiation
• pressure
• hydrodynamics
• shear
• viscosity
• numerical
• simulation