Protostar : Study
A team of researchers at the IIST, Thiruvananthapuram, recently discovered radio emission with a special property known as circular polarisation near a massive young protostar that is still forming about 4,500 light-years from Earth.
- A protostar is an early stage in the star formation
- It is a large mass of gas and dust formed as a result of the contraction of a giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium.
- As the cloud collapses, gravitational energy is converted into heat, warming the still-forming protostar.
- It may last from 100,000 to 10 million years, depending on the mass of the star.
- It begins with an increase in density in the molecular cloud core and ends with the formation of a pre-main-sequence star.
- Pre-main-sequence stars of similar mass to the Sun are known as T-Tauri stars.
- Once hydrogen fusion ignites in the core of a star, it begins producing energy and becomes a main sequence star.
- Protostars are usually surrounded by dust, which blocks the light that they emit, so they are difficult to observe in the visible spectrum.
