Related papers: Massive Star Formation in the Galactic Center
The Galactic Center contains the most massive young clusters in the Galaxy and serves as the closest example of a massive starburst region. Our recent results suggest that the Galactic Center environment produces massive clusters with…
Our Galactic Center hosts over 10% of the known massive stars in the Galaxy. The majority of these stars are located in three particularly massive clusters that formed within the past 5 Myr. While these clusters are extraordinary, their…
Galactic nuclei often harbor a disproportionately large amount of star formation activity with respect to their surrounding disks. Not coincidentally, the density of molecular material in galactic nuclei is often also much greater than that…
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre (GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in the…
In the present-day universe, it appears that most, and perhaps all, massive stars are born in star clusters. It also appears that all star clusters contain stars drawn from an approximately universal initial mass function, so that almost…
The formation environment of stars in massive stellar clusters is similar to the environment of stars forming in galaxies at a redshift of 1 - 3, at the peak star formation rate density of the Universe. As massive clusters are still forming…
The origin of the population of very massive stars observed within $\sim 0.4$ pc of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Centre is a mystery. Tidal forces from the black hole would likely inhibit {\it in situ} star formation whilst…
The supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Center is surrounded by a parsec-scale star cluster, which contains a number of early type stars. The presence of such stars has been called a "paradox of youth" as star formation in the…
Research on Galactic Center star formation is making great advances, in particular due to new data from interferometers spatially resolving molecular clouds in this environment. These new results are discussed in the context of established…
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
From an analysis of the stars remaining in central regions of the Galaxy after subtracting those belonging to the disc and the bulge, we deduce that the inner bulge must have an extra young population with respect the rest of the bulge. It…
The presence of young massive stars orbiting on eccentric rings within a few tenths of a parsec of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic centre is challenging for theories of star formation. The high tidal shear from the black hole…
The environment near the massive black hole (MBH) in the Galactic center is very hostile for star formation. Nevertheless, many young stars (both O and B stars) are observed close the MBH. The B-stars seems to have an isotropic, continuous…
The currently available empirical evidence on the star formation processes in the extreme, high-pressure environments induced by galaxy encounters, mostly based on high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging observations, strongly…
A massive black hole resides in the center of most, perhaps all galaxies. The one in the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, provides a uniquely accessible laboratory for studying in detail the connections and interactions between a…
The center of our galaxy is home to a massive black hole, SgrA*, and a nuclear star cluster containing stellar populations of various ages. While the late type stars may be too old to have retained memory of their initial orbital…
Young, massive star clusters are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions, mergers, and close encounters. Their contribution to the total luminosity induced by such…
The currently available empirical evidence on the star formation processes in the extreme, high-pressure environments induced by galaxy encounters, mostly based on high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging observations, strongly…
Protostars and young stars are strongly spatially "clustered" or "correlated" within their natal giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We demonstrate that such clustering leads to the conclusion that the incident bolometric radiative flux upon a…
The Galactic centre hosts a crowded, dense nuclear star cluster with a half-light radius of 4 pc. Most of the stars in the Galactic centre are cool late-type stars, but there are also >100 hot early-type stars in the central parsec of the…