An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A warm, compact → molecular clump found in the inner envelope of a → Class 0 → protostar. Hot corinos are low-mass analogs of → hot molecular cores (HMCs) occurring in → massive star formation sites. With a typical size of ≤ 150 → astronomical units, hot corinos are two orders of magnitude smaller than HMCs. They have densities ≥ 10⁷ cm^-3 and temperatures ≥ 100 K (Ceccarelli, C. 2004, ASP Conf. Ser. 323, 195).

See also: → hot; corino, from → core + -ino a diminutive suffix in It.