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Tachocline
The tachocline is the transition region of stars of more than 0.3 solar masses, between the radiative interior and the differentially rotating outer convective zone. This causes the region to have a very large shear as the rotation rate changes very rapidly. The convective exterior rotates as a normal fluid with differential rotation with the poles rotating slowly and the equator rotating quickly. The radiative interior exhibits solid-body rotation, possibly due to a fossil field. The rotation rate through the interior is roughly equal to the rotation rate at mid-latitudes, i.e. in-between the rate at the slow poles and the fast equator. Recent results from helioseismology indicate that the tachocline is located at a radius of at most 0.70 times the solar radius (measured from the core, i.e., the surface is at 1 solar radius), with a thickness of 0.04 times the solar radius. This would mean the area has a very large shear profile that is one way that large scale magnetic fiel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Differential Rotation
Differential rotation is seen when different parts of a rotating object move with different angular velocities (or rates of rotation) at different latitudes and/or depths of the body and/or in time. This indicates that the object is not rigid. In fluid objects, such as accretion disks, this leads to shearing. Galaxies and protostars usually show differential rotation; examples in the Solar System include the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. Around the year 1610, Galileo Galilei observed sunspots and calculated the rotation of the Sun. In 1630, Christoph Scheiner reported that the Sun had different rotational periods at the poles and at the equator, in good agreement with modern values. Cause Stars and planets rotate in the first place because conservation of angular momentum turns random drifting of parts of the molecular cloud that they form from into rotating motion as they coalesce. Given this average rotation of the whole body, internal differential rotation is caused by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helioseismology
Helioseismology is the study of the structure and dynamics of the Sun through its oscillations. These are principally caused by sound waves that are continuously driven and damped by convection near the Sun's surface. It is similar to geoseismology, or asteroseismology, which are respectively the studies of the Earth or stars through their oscillations. While the Sun's oscillations were first detected in the early 1960s, it was only in the mid-1970s that it was realized that the oscillations propagated throughout the Sun and could allow scientists to study the Sun's deep interior. The term was coined by Douglas Gough in the 90s. The modern field is separated into global helioseismology, which studies the Sun's resonant modes directly, and local helioseismology, which studies the propagation of the component waves near the Sun's surface. Helioseismology has contributed to a number of scientific breakthroughs. The most notable was to show that the anomaly in the predicted neutri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stars
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy. A star's life begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material largely comprising hydrogen, helium, and traces of heavier elements. Its stellar mass, total mass mainly determines its stellar evolution, evolution and eventual fate. A star shines for main sequence, most of its active life due to the thermonu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Mass
The solar mass () is a frequently used unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is approximately equal to the mass of the Sun. It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. More precisely, the mass of the Sun is The solar mass is about times the mass of Earth (), or times the mass of Jupiter (). History of measurement The value of the gravitational constant was first derived from measurements that were made by Henry Cavendish in 1798 with a torsion balance. The value he obtained differs by only 1% from the modern value, but was not as precise. The diurnal parallax of the Sun was accurately measured during the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769, yielding a value of (9 arcseconds, compared to the present value of ). From the value of the diurnal parallax, one can determine the distance to the Sun from the geometry of Earth. The first known estimate of the solar mass was by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radiation Zone
A radiative zone is a layer of a star's interior where energy is primarily transported toward the exterior by means of radiative diffusion and thermal conduction, rather than by convection. Energy travels through the radiative zone in the form of electromagnetic radiation as photons. Matter in a radiative zone is so dense that photons can travel only a short distance before they are absorbed or scattered by another particle, gradually shifting to longer wavelength as they do so. For this reason, it takes an average of 171,000 years for gamma rays from the core of the Sun to leave the radiative zone. Over this range, the temperature of the plasma drops from 15 million K near the core down to 1.5 million K at the base of the convection zone. Temperature gradient In a radiative zone, the temperature gradient—the change in temperature (''T'') as a function of radius (''r'')—is given by: : \frac\ =\ -\frac where ''κ''(''r'') is the opacity, ''ρ''(''r'') is the matter density, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convection Zone
A convection zone, convective zone or convective region of a star is a layer which is unstable due to convection. Energy is primarily or partially transported by convection in such a region. In a radiation zone, energy is transported by radiation and conduction (heat), conduction. Stellar convection consists of mass movement of plasma within the star which usually forms a circular convection current with the heated plasma ascending and the cooled plasma descending. The Schwarzschild criterion expresses the conditions under which a region of a star is unstable to convection. A parcel of gas that rises slightly will find itself in an environment of lower pressure than the one it came from. As a result, the parcel will expand and cool. If the rising parcel cools to a lower temperature than its new surroundings, so that it has a higher density than the surrounding gas, then its lack of buoyancy will cause it to sink back to where it came from. However, if the temperature gradient is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shear (fluid)
Shear stress (often denoted by , Greek alphabet, Greek: tau) is the component of stress (physics), stress coplanar with a material cross section. It arises from the shear force, the component of force vector parallel to the material cross section. ''Normal stress'', on the other hand, arises from the force vector component perpendicular to the material cross section on which it acts. General shear stress The formula to calculate average shear stress or force per unit area is: \tau = ,where is the force applied and is the cross-sectional area. The area involved corresponds to the material face (geometry), face parallel to the applied force vector, i.e., with surface normal vector perpendicular to the force. Other forms Wall shear stress Wall shear stress expresses the retarding force (per unit area) from a wall in the layers of a fluid flowing next to the wall. It is defined as:\tau_w := \mu\left.\frac\_,where is the dynamic viscosity, is the flow velocity, and is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil Stellar Magnetic Field
Fossil stellar magnetic fields or ''fossil fields'' are proposed as possible interstellar magnetic fields that became locked into certain stars. Vincent Duez, Stéphane Mathis, Sylvaine Turck-Chièze. ''Effect of a fossil magnetic field on the structure of a young Sun'/ref> See also * Stellar magnetic field A stellar magnetic field is a magnetic field generated by the motion of conductive plasma inside a star. This motion is created through convection, which is a form of energy transport involving the physical movement of material. A localized mag ... References Magnetism in astronomy Stellar astronomy {{stellar-astronomy-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Dynamo
The solar dynamo is a physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field. It is explained with a variant of the dynamo theory. A naturally occurring electric generator in the Sun's interior produces electric currents and a magnetic field, following the laws of Ampère, Faraday and Ohm, as well as the laws of fluid dynamics, which together form the laws of magnetohydrodynamics. The detailed mechanism of the solar dynamo is not known and is the subject of current research. Mechanism A dynamo converts kinetic energy into electric-magnetic energy. An electrically conducting fluid with shear or more complicated motion, such as turbulence, can temporarily amplify a magnetic field through Lenz's law: fluid motion relative to a magnetic field induces electric currents in the fluid that distort the initial field. If the fluid motion is sufficiently complicated, it can sustain its own magnetic field, with advective fluid amplification essentially balancing diffusive or ohmic decay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toroidal And Poloidal
The terms toroidal and poloidal refer to directions relative to a torus of reference. They describe a three-dimensional coordinate system in which the poloidal direction follows a small circular ring around the surface, while the toroidal direction follows a large circular ring around the torus, encircling the central void. The earliest use of these terms cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is by Walter M. Elsasser (1946) in the context of the generation of the Earth's magnetic field by currents in the core, with "toroidal" being parallel to lines of constant latitude and "poloidal" being in the direction of the magnetic field (i.e. towards the poles). The OED also records the later usage of these terms in the context of toroidally confined plasmas, as encountered in magnetic confinement fusion. In the plasma context, the toroidal direction is the long way around the torus, the corresponding coordinate being denoted by in the slab approximation or or in magnetic coordinat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brown Dwarfs
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main-sequence stars. Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter ()not big enough to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in their cores, but massive enough to emit some light and heat from the fusion of deuterium ( 2H). The most massive ones (> ) can fuse lithium ( 7Li). Astronomers classify self-luminous objects by spectral type, a distinction intimately tied to the surface temperature, and brown dwarfs occupy types M (2100–3500 K), L (1300–2100 K), T (600–1300 K), and Y (< 600 K). As brown dwarfs do not undergo stable hydrogen fusion, they cool down over time, progressively passing through later spectral types as they age. Their name comes not from the color of light ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
