T-Tauri Stars

A newborn star typically goes through four stages of adolescence. It begins life as a protostar still enshrouded in its natal molecular cloud, accreting new material and developing a proto-planetary disc. Slowly, stellar winds and radiation blow away the surrounding shell of gas and dust, and the third stage, when the surrounding envelope has cleared, is called the T-Tauri phase. T-Tauri stars (the class is named after the first star of this type that was so identified) are less than about ten m...