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Much of the astrophysics community's present understanding of the structure, stability, and dynamical evolution of individual stars, short-period binary star systems, and the gaseous disks that are associated with numerous types of stellar systems (including galaxies) are derived from an examination of the behavior of a specific set of coupled, partial differential equations. These equations — most of which also are heavily utilized in studies of continuum flows in terrestrial environments — are thought to govern the underlying physics of all macroscopic fluid systems in astronomy. Although relatively simple in form, they prove to be very rich in nature.

The literature on this subject is enormous, as serious discussions of the structure and dynamical properties of stars and galaxies date back well over a century. The primary purpose of this work is two-fold:

1. To document in an electronically accessible format many of the key physical principles that underlie modern discussions of the structure, stability, and dynamical evolution of astrophysical fluid systems.
2. To take advantage of the added dimensions offered by the hypertext medium — such as color, text/equation linkages, animation, and virtual reality environments — to effectively illustrate many of these physical principles.

We have adopted MediaWiki as the hosting environment of choice most significantly because, after incorporating the proper set of extensions, it facilitates the insertion of complex, LaTeX-formulated mathematical expressions into the text.

If you are interested in learning about, or extending your understanding and appreciation of, the behavior of self-gravitating astrophysical fluids, we recommend that you proceed to the accompanying table of contents, which we have assembled in a form that will be referred to as a Tiled Menu; each tile is linked to a separate chapter discussion. From each chapter you will be able to return to the overarching Tiled Menu by clicking the appropriately named category link at the top of the indexed column on the left.

Highlights

Tiled Menu

Individual tiles are linked to …

• Introductory discussions of the Principal Governing Equations.
• Roughly 50 chapters that examine the structure, stability, and dynamical collapse of spherically symmetric configurations.