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Kelly Lepo

Here is a diagram that shows the scale of this system and the flow of material. 1 au = the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Gas falls from the nebula onto the disk surrounding the forming star, before being pulled into the star itself. The protostar and the disk also work together to eject material, which carves a cavity above and below the disk.

Credit: Tobin et al. 2012
arxiv.org/abs/1212.0861

Diagram depicting the flow of gas around a protostar. A green circle with a diameter of approximately 25,000 A U, labeled “infalling envelope”, has a star at its center. Arrows inside the envelope point toward the star. The star has a faired disk, which has a diameter about one-third that of the green circle. A scale bar shows the disk has a diameter of about 300 A U. The left side of the disk is red and the right side of the disk is blue. Above and below the disk are U-shaped cutouts of the green circle. Inside the cutout, arrows labeled “outflow” point up and down.
16 Nov 2022 at 17:09 | Open on astrodon.social
8 comments
ThatHil
Kelly Lepo

@ThatHil
This is a diagram from a science paper that I grabbed quickly.

Usually when discussing things about the size of our solar system, astronomers use units of AU, astronomical units, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. It's about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).

Why? It gives you an intuitive-ish size scale. Much easier than talking about millions of km.

16 Nov 2022 at 20:51 | Open on astrodon.social
ThatHil

@kellylepo
Thank you :) I meant why minus numbers? Not that I'll probably understand any explanation. Anyway am glad to have discovered there IS a bigger unit of measurement than a football pitch or Wales.

16 Nov 2022 at 20:58 | Open on mastodon.uk.com
Working Class Games
Average Alegreya Afficionado

@kellylepo this diagram was confusing initially before I read the labels; am I correct in saying that the green parts here aren't visible in the image and the outflow (uncoloured here) is the hourglass shape?

16 Nov 2022 at 21:50 | Open on astrodon.social
James Bly

@kellylepo Am I the only one looking for an arrow that says "you are here"? Congrats on being one of the first federated posts to show up for me. Glad to know this things on.

17 Nov 2022 at 2:31 | Open on perish.restricted.garden
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