[mesa-users] Iron cores

Bill Paxton paxton at kitp.ucsb.edu
Sat Mar 3 11:48:14 EST 2012


Hi Chelsea,

On Mar 3, 2012, at 7:09 AM, Chelsea Harris wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone ever evolved >8 solar mass stars up to an iron core? I've heard this could be problematic.

1st question -- does your project really require going to iron core, or would it be enough to go to within
a few years of iron core so you could terminate at an earlier burning stage such as Neon?
If so, you'll have a much easier time and can look at a wider range of masses without great difficulty.

If you need to go to core collapse, the mass range 15 to 25 seems to be a "sweet spot" where the
computation doesn't have too much trouble.  There are experts (some on mesa-users) who can
do more, but I'm not one of them.

You might want to run the star/test_suite/15M_si_burn case to see an example go to iron core infall.

Good luck,
Bill






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