protostarn.
/ˈprəʊtə(ʊ)stɑː/, U.S. /ˈproʊdoʊˌstɑr/ Astronomy.
A contracting mass of gas representing an early stage in the formation of a star, before the star is dense enough to sustain nuclear reactions.
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protostar1948
1948 L. Spitzer in Centennial Symp. 1946 (Harvard Observatory Monogr. No. 7) i. vii. 100 During this stage of gravitational contraction an aggregation of dust and atoms will be stable..; it should no longer be regarded as a cloud, and will here be called a ‘protostar’.
1972 Sci. Amer. Aug. 49/3 It has been suggested that protostars are formed when some of the gas and dust associated with the spiral arms of the galaxy piles up into clouds.
1994 H. Karttunen et al. Fund. Astron. xii. 276 The contraction of a protostar only stops when a large fraction of the gas is ionized.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2007; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1948