Astrophysics (Index)About

Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit

(maximum stellar isothermal helium core mass)

The Schönberg-Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum stable isothermal mass of the helium stellar core formed from fusion in a main sequence star. A core is isothermal (same temperature throughout) if the energy source (fusion) surrounds it (i.e., forming a shell) and everything is sufficiently stable that the core falls into and essentially remains at equilibrium. Only stars in a certain mass range grow such a core large enough to reach the limit. For those that do, helium fusion begins and the star enters the red-giant stage. The limit depends upon characteristics of the star's interior:

Mcore/M ≈ 0.37(μenvcore

The above limit is not the same as the Chandrasekhar limit (the maximum mass of a white dwarf), though the two would seem to be related.


(astrophysics,stars,constant,limit,mass)
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoenberg-Chandrasekhar_limit
https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~burrows/classes/514/schon.ps
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Schonberg-Chandrasekhar_limit.html
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1942ApJ....96..161S/abstract

Index