Birth of a cluster
01 · 6
A turbulent cloud
Stars are born inside cold, turbulent molecular clouds. This one is real — a gravoturbulent density field from progenax, sculpted into filaments and a dense central clump by supersonic turbulence.
02 · 6
Down to the dense core
Gravity wins where the gas piles up. We fall toward the cloud's dense heart — the self-gravitating gas that is about to collapse into stars.
03 · 6
The stars ignite
Ten thousand stars switch on — sampled from a real initial mass function and placed by the density they formed in. Cool red dwarfs are common; the rare hot stars are the whole story.
04 · 6
The massive stars
A handful of O and B stars — enlarged here — outshine everything else. Born in the densest gas, they sit deep in the cluster, and they will not go quietly.
05 · 6
Feedback clears the gas
Their radiation and winds drive the leftover gas outward, unbinding the cloud. The natal gas thins and clears — the physics my radiation-hydrodynamics work models.
06 · 6
A bare star cluster
The gas is gone; the stars remain. What began as a turbulent clump is now a young star cluster — the endpoint this whole site is about.