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Paper: Circumstellar Structures: Star Formation Building Blocks
Volume: 356, Revealing the Molecular Universe: One Antenna Is Never Enough
Page: 177
Authors: Looney, L.W.
Abstract: A brief overview of our understanding of circumstellar structures, the building blocks of protostellar systems, is discussed based on data from the BIMA interferometeric survey. We show that the density profiles in the circumstellar envelopes of the youngest, most deeply embedded protostars, the so-called Class 0 sources, are steeper than most isothermal models predict. In addition, the young disks, hidden in the dense envelope of the embedded sources, are no more massive than the disks in the older, circumstellar-disk dominated sources. Finally, we discuss the circumstellar disks in T Tauri stellar systems. With the assumption of a geometrically thin disk, the surface density is shallower than expected from current models. We suggest that models need to pay stricter attention to the Σ ∼ r−1 scaling law.
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