Principles of Star Formation
Understanding star formation is one of the key fields in present-day astrophysics. This book treats a wide variety of the physical processes involved, as well as the main observational discoveries, with key points being discussed in detail. The current st
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G. B¨orner, Garching, Germany A. Burkert, M¨unchen, Germany W. B. Burton, Charlottesville, VA, USA and Leiden, The Netherlands A. Coustenis, Meudon, France M. A. Dopita, Canberra, Australia B. Leibundgut, Garching, Germany A. Maeder, Sauverny, Switzerland P. Schneider, Bonn, Germany V. Trimble, College Park, MD, and Irvine, CA, USA
For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/848
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Peter H. Bodenheimer
Principles of Star Formation
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Peter H. Bodenheimer University of California, Santa Cruz UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA [email protected]
ISSN 0941-7834 ISBN 978-3-642-15062-3 e-ISBN 978-3-642-15063-0 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-15063-0 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011933131 c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: eStudio Calamar S.L. Cover figure: “Orion’s Dreamy Stars”. Spitzer Space Telescope image of the star forming region Orion Nebula (M42). A colony of hot, young stars is stirring up the cosmic scene. This image is a combination of data from Spitzer and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech). Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
In its simplest terms, star formation is the combination of processes that, in the context of very low-density interstellar gas, brings a certain amount of material to the point where the force of gravity exceeds all other opposing forces, resulting in collapse. On the theoretical side, one of the early significant accomplishments in the development of this concept was the determination, by Sir James Jeans in 1928, of what is now called the “Jeans length”, one of the important conditions needed for the collapse in the interstellar medium to begin. Observationally, an early convincing piece of evidence in favor of the above hypothesis was the discovery, for example, by Walter Baade, that hot massive stars, that must be young, were associated with dust clouds and relatively dense interstellar gas in the spiral arms of galaxies outside the Milky Way, such as M31. In the last few decades, progress in understanding the details of this ba
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