The Roche lobe is the region of
space around a
star in a
binary system within which orbiting material is gravitationally bound to that star. If the star expands past its Roche lobe, then the material outside of the lobe will fall into the other star. It is an approximately tear-drop shaped region bounded by a critical gravitational
equipotential, with the apex of the tear-drop pointing towards the other star (and the apex is at the
Lagrange L1 point of the system). It is different from the
Roche limit which is the distance at which an object held together only by gravity begins to break up due to
tidal forces. It is different from the
Roche sphere which approximates the
gravitational sphere of influence of one
astronomical body in the face of perturbations from another heavier body around which it
orbits. The Roche lobe, Roche limit and Roche sphere are named after the
French astronomer Édouard Roche.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
Pear-shaped regions around the stars in a binary star system. The lobes define the space within which each star's
gravity dominates. They touch at the inner Lagrangian point.
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