Run-away Stars as the Result of the Gravitational Collapse of Proto-stellar Clusters
Abstract
Some of the difficulties in our present understanding of the origin of run-away stars and expanding clusters are briefly discussed; an alternative explanation for these phenomena is proposed here as the result of dynamical interactions during the collapse of small clusters of massive stars. The initial conditions of the collapse are discussed and justified in terms of current ideas on star formation, and the dynamical evolution of 54 cases of collapsing clusters (containing 5 and 6 stars) is followed numerically. Out of these 54 cases a total of 38 run-away stars were formed with velocities larger than 35 km/sec and up to 185 km/sec with percentages of production that go as high as 15% of the stars involved in different clusters. Approximately one half of the run-away stars are produced together with a second star having positive energy and running in opposite direction. Twelve clusters ejected at least one half of their stars with positive energy.
- Publication:
-
Boletin de los Observatorios Tonantzintla y Tacubaya
- Pub Date:
- April 1967
- Bibcode:
- 1967BOTT....4...86P
- Keywords:
-
- Stars: Kinematics;
- Stars: Binaries