Graphical representation of the model for the birth of massive stars. The density distribution around the resulting star is color-coded (Copyright: Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik; Universität Tübingen).
Astronomers of the Universities of Tübingen and Vienna are investigating the basic principles of the formation of stars. "How do massive stars form?" is one of the fundamental questions in modern astrophysics, because these massive stars govern the energy budget of their host galaxies. Using numerical simulations, researchers at the University of Tübingen in a collaboration with Eduard Vorobyov from the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Vienna revealed new components of the formation of massive stars, which were already known from the formation process of low-mass as well as primordial stars. The study has now been published in the peer-review journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The birth of massive stars is still a mystery to us, because these stars are embedded in an extremely dense medium of gas and dust, says Rolf Kuiper, the leader of the Emmy Noether Research Group for Massive Star Formation, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). "This opaque envelope makes it difficult to directly observe the birth process even with modern telescopes. In other words, we see the cradle in which these stars are born, but we can't detect the stars themselves." Therefore, the researchers modeled the birth process within a numerical simulation.
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