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Originally Posted by deniseselmo
Wonderful links. Thanks for sharing! The whole site is a gem. It will help me a lot.
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Thank you, Denise.
I am glad you find this information helpful.
There is a real "problem" with the language (definitions)(specialized jargon) used in Star Formation studies, because, 25 years ago, this was only a
theoretical subject, and it is only recently that observations in the Far-infrared, sub-millimetre, and millimetre regimes have turned this into an
observational science.
Star forming cores are
small, and
distant, and they are
very highly obscured at visual wavelengths, and astronomers had only
very poor angular resolution instruments available at these long wavelengths.......till the last 15 or 20 years.
Because "how exactly stars form" can only be discussed in the context of the last 20 years of observations, both the language and the concepts of this science have
changed a lot in the last 20 years.
I am currently working on a document, which will be submitted into this forum, which attempts to define words such as "core", "starless core", prestellar core, type 0 object, type 1 object, type 2 object, etc.
The interstellar medium is an
extremely complicated thing!!
(at last count, I have 16 books about it in my personal library.....)
best regards,
Robert
The star forming cores, from which low mass stars like the Sun form, are
directly visible in the far-infrared regime. Even though these objects are cold (5-30 degrees Kelvin), their spectral energy distributions peak at similar wavelengths.
Herschel Space Telescope is able to
directly detect these and other components of the very cold ISM....and Herschel can even
resolve the interior of
nearby cores e.g. in the Lupus, Taurus, and Rho Ophiuchi molecular clouds.
See, for example, the "Hi-GAL" survey (this can be found using google)
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If you are at the undergraduate or beginning graduate or "advanced amateur" level, I highly recommend "The Origin of Stars", by Michael D. Smith, which is a
short and
concise and
very well written and Very Understandable
summary of the field of Star Formation studies. (this book is
probably too hard for most intermediate-level amateur astronomers)
"The Formation of Stars", by S.Stahler and F.Palla (published by Wiley) is another
excellent book about star formation (there is more physics in it than in Smith's book).
Stahler & Palla contains very detailed information; enough to suit the requirements of people who want to become professional astronomers.
In contrast, when reading Smith's book, you have to
think like a physicist or astronomer, but there is only a
medium amount of algebra in his book, together with many long passages of description.