Related papers: The Centre of M83
The Orion Molecular Complex is the nearest site of ongoing high-mass star formation, making it one of the most extensively studied molecular complexes in the Galaxy. We have developed a new technique for mapping the 3D distribution of dust…
Accretion is a fundamental process in star formation. Although the time evolution of accretion remains a matter of debate, observations and modelling studies suggest that episodic outbursts of strong accretion may dominate the formation of…
Star formation in elliptical galaxies (Es) was and is mostly dominated by mergers and accretions with many suggestive examples seen among local galaxies. Present day star formation in Es is easily measurable in two thirds of Es and appears…
Studies of the Galactic Centre suggest that in-situ star formation may have given rise to the observed stellar population near the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Direct evidence for a recent starburst is provided by the currently…
The oxygen (O/H) and N/O abundance ratios along the bar of 16 barred spiral starburst galaxies are determined using long-slit spectroscopy. The abundance gradients and the spatial distribution of the ionized gas along the bar are used to…
We consider the radiation-hydrodynamical formation of a dusty wall in the circumnuclear regions of the Circinus Seyfert 2 galaxy. We focus on the radiative flux force due to the circumnuclear starburst, the nuclear starburst and the active…
We present a study of the star cluster formation in M51 based on the image data taken with Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) of Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We have derived the star cluster…
High resolution imaging with the HST uncovers the so far hidden stellar content and the nebular features of the high excitation compact HII region N83B in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We discover that the HII region is powered by the…
To understand the formation of stellar groups, one must first document carefully the birth pattern within real clusters and associations. In this study of Taurus-Auriga, we combine pre-main-sequence ages from our own evolutionary tracks…
Recent results from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have resolved starbursts as collections of compact young stellar clusters. Here we present a photometric catalogue of the young stellar clusters in the nuclear starburst of M82, observed with…
AIMS: The cluster of hot stars observed in orbit around the central black hole of M31 has been interpreted as a 200 Myr starburst. The formation of a population of young stars in close proximity to a massive black hole presents a difficult…
I assess the similarities and differences between the star-formation modes in quiescent spiral galaxies versus those in violent starburst regions. As opposed to the quiescent star-formation mode in spiral galaxies, current empirical…
We present a study of the abundance of Be stars in open clusters as a function of the cluster age, using whenever possible ages determined through Stromgren uvby photometry. For the first time in studies of this kind we have considered…
The rotation curve of the small-mass starburst galaxy M82 has a steep nuclear rise, peaking at 200 pc radius, and then, declines in a Keplerian fashion. This rotation curve mimics that for a central bulge of spiral galaxies with high…
Based on deep VLT/ISAAC JHK photometry, we have derived the present-day mass function of the central starburst cluster NGC 3603 YC (Young Cluster) in the giant HII region NGC 3603. The effects of field contamination, individual reddening,…
We introduce a near-IR monitoring campaign of the Local Group spiral galaxy M33, carried out with the UK IR Telescope (UKIRT). The pulsating giant stars are identified and their distributions are used to derive the star formation rate as a…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
We present an analysis of the spatial distribution of various stellar populations within the Large Magellanic Cloud. We combine mid-infrared selected young stellar objects, optically selected samples with mean ages between ~9 and ~1000 Myr,…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
The study of the very young open cluster NGC 6231 clearly shows the presence of a mass segregation for the most massive stars. These observations, combined with those concerning other young objects and very recent numerical simulations,…