How to Use protostar in a Sentence

protostar

noun
  • Dense clumps within these clouds can collapse to form protostars.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 15 Mar. 2024
  • The protostar doesn’t contract, though, since it’s still held up by gas pressure.
    — Big Think, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Brown dwarfs have been found in stellar nurseries alongside young protostars.
    — Katelyn Allers, Scientific American, 1 Aug. 2021
  • This means the protostar can keep most of the surrounding matter for itself and doesn’t have to share.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Light from the protostar spreads above and below this disc, according to a news release.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 16 Nov. 2022
  • The brown regions are where the dust is the thickest—and the greatest number of young protostars are forming.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 12 July 2023
  • Herbig-Haro objects are glowing clouds of gas and dust shaped by newborn stars or protostars.
    — Victoria Corless, Space.com, 24 Mar. 2025
  • One of these contracting masses of gas, known as a protostar, represents a star’s nascent phase.
    — Catherine Zuckerman, National Geographic, 20 Mar. 2019
  • As the protostar continues to gain mass and compress further, its core will continue to heat up.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 16 Nov. 2022
  • When planets form, they are born out of the disks of gas and dust surrounding protostars in calm environments.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 11 Sep. 2023
  • However, just as human infants are pretty messy, so too are protostars.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 18 Jan. 2026
  • Gas and dust that streams down from farther out doesn’t just fall directly onto a protostar, however.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 13 Feb. 2025
  • This material bunches up into a disk around the young protostar.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Astronomers find these high-energy outflows are easier to see than the protostars that launch them.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 28 Apr. 2025
  • This could include shocks caused when material from the molecular cloud falls to the protostar.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 30 Nov. 2025
  • This births a protostar that continues to gather matter from its prenatal cocoon of gas and dust.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 24 Dec. 2024
  • The bright patches and filaments denote areas with large numbers of protostars.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 11 Oct. 2023
  • The bright patches and filaments mark areas with abundant numbers of protostars.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 23 Oct. 2023
  • Layers of dust between Webb and the protostar give the regions their different colors.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Nov. 2022
  • This image of the protostar looks almost like a fiery hourglass in space, giving off some fantastic science fiction vibes in the process.
    — Joe Wituschek, BGR, 30 Dec. 2022
  • This material is eventually flattened out into a swirling disk with the protostar at its heart.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 16 July 2025
  • Star birth begins with the formation of a protostar as gravity pulls gas clouds together in a process known as accretion.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Become a Subscriber The star in the image is a newborn in stellar terms, also called a protostar.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2023
  • Because the dust in the nebulae obscures them, protostars can be difficult for astronomers to detect.
    — Catherine Zuckerman, National Geographic, 20 Mar. 2019
  • The protostar is the source of an unusual asymmetric, double-sided jet, visible here in blue.
    — Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, 18 Dec. 2024
  • As the material from the disk accretes onto the protostar, the protostar gets hotter.
    — Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 2 July 2010
  • The team now plans to study more protostars in the outer galaxy to see if ejection cycles or molecular chemistry change with metallicity.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Rather, its energy comes from the radiation released by shockwaves on the surface of the protostar and its accretion disk.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 16 Nov. 2022
  • These reflection nebulae shine because light from the protostar bounces off them, creating the butterfly-like shape.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 30 Aug. 2025
  • In the center, the material clumped together to form a protostar that would eventually become the sun.
    — Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, 9 Aug. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'protostar.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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