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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2006
We consider the rapid rotation, in the sense of large Reynolds number ε−1, of a gravitating solid sphere in a monatomic gas. The flow is characterized by a thin boundary layer on the sphere and a thin, swirling, buoyant, radial jet in the equatorial plane. When the Prandtl number σ is of order unity, the boundary layer and jet are to first order uncoupled from the outer flow. For sufficiently small Prandtl number (which may be interpreted as approximating an optically thick radiating gas), the outer flow is boundary-layer driven. The parameter boundary between these two dissimilar steady states is σ = O(ε⅙).