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abstract
Session 25 - Stellar Winds, Accretion, & Molecular Clouds.
Oral session, Monday, January 15
La Condesa, Hilton
Stellar wind bow shocks have been seen in association with a wide variety of stellar objects from pulsars to young stars. A new solution method is presented for momentum-conserving bow shocks in the thin-shell limit, which stresses the importance of the conserved momentum within the shell. This method leads to exact analytic solutions to the classical problem of Baranov, Krasnobaev amp; Kulikovskii (1971). Simple formulae are given for the shell shape, mass column density and velocity of shocked gas at all points in the shell. These solutions will facilitate detailed comparison between observed sources and bow shock models because the formulae are easily manipulated without the need for numerical integrations. Intuitive derivations permit these solutions to be readily understood.
