Word.ws English Dictionary

Roche lobe

Roche lobe noun: the teardrop-shaped region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star.

Noun

Roche lobe (plural Roche lobes)

  1. The teardrop-shaped region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star.
    • A further interesting situation (although not one of much relevance for this book) comes about if both stars for some reason fill their Roche lobes simultaneously.2002, Juhan Frank, Andrew King, Derek Raine, Accretion Power in Astrophysics, page 54
    • Generally, mass transfer by Roche lobe overflow is required to power LMXRB's, since low mass stars never exhibit strong stellar winds.2012, C. de Loore, C. Doom, Structure and Evolution of Single and Binary Stars, page 386

Forms of Roche lobe

pluralRoche lobes

Origin of Roche lobe

Named after Édouard Roche.

Questions about Roche lobe

What does Roche lobe mean?
Roche lobe means the teardrop-shaped region around a star in a binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star.
What part of speech is Roche lobe?
Roche lobe is a noun.
What is the plural of Roche lobe?
The plural of Roche lobe is Roche lobes.

Words near Roche lobe in the dictionary

  1. Rochdale
  2. Rochdale principles
  3. roche
  4. Roche limit
  5. Roche limits
  6. Roche lobe
  7. Roche lobes
  8. roche moutonnée
  9. Roche radii
  10. Roche radius
  11. Roche sphere

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Roche lobe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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