Birth of Stars

1. We have a midterm exam on Thursday, 15 November.
2. There are two quizzes for this week, due Sunday night.
3. Prof. Soper has a graduate student "comprehensive exam" on Monday, 12 November, from 2 until 3:30, so his Monday office hour will be delayed until 3:30. He will be available until 5 pm.

• We discuss star birth. We have talked about the dynamics of star birth: a struggle between gravity and pressure. Now we move on to a simiple model of what happens, with sketches. Then we look at some of the evidence for this in the sky and some of the temper tantrums of a protostar. [Cf. CM Ch. 19 on the star birth.]
• If there is time, we can talk about how the protostar's point on a Hertsprung-Russell diagram changes during this process. We can also discuss what happens if the star has more mass than the sun, or less, and how fast heavy stars, medium weight stars, and light stars are burning their fuel. This information is near the top of the page Life on the Main Sequence.

Updated 7 November 2007