Star formation by collapse of molecular clouds

Simulation by SPH of the collapse and fragmentation of a molecular cloud presented in “The Formation of Stars and Brown Dwarfs and the Truncation of Protoplanetary Discs in a Star Cluster“ by Matthew R. Bate, Ian A. Bonnell, and Volker Bromm (). The calculation models the collapse and fragmentation of a molecular cloud with a mass 50 times that of our Sun. The cloud is initially 1.2 light-years (9.5 million million kilometres) in diameter, with a temperature of 10 Kelvin (-263 degrees Celsius).