[Mesa-users] stellar wind velocity

[Jiri Krticka]

Hi Saul,

On Tue, 12 Oct 2021, Saul A Rappaport wrote:

>
> 	To reiterate, I’m simply trying to understand why, when a massive
> star (5-20 Msun) reaches the giant branch, the stellar wind abruptly
> drops from 50 km/sec to 10 m/sec.
>

>From the content of the $MESA_DIR/star/defaults/history_columns.list file 
I would guess that what you get in v_wind_Km_per_s is the wind speed in 
the photosphere (determined from the mass-loss rate and photospheric 
density) and not the terminal wind speed. I would say that 10 m/sec is a 
perfectly reasonable value, while 50 km/sec could be too high and perhaps 
could be caused by a poor resolution of the photosphere, as Frank 
mentioned.

With best wishes

Jiri