Related papers: Star Formation and Molecular Clouds at High Galact…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
The inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way harbours gas densities, pressures, velocity dispersions, an interstellar radiation field and a cosmic ray ionisation rate orders of magnitude higher than the disc; akin to the environment found…
We study the star formation (SF) law in 12 Galactic molecular clouds with ongoing high-mass star formation (HMSF) activity, as traced by the presence of a bright IRAS source and other HMSF tracers. We define the molecular cloud (MC)…
Massive galaxies in the early Universe have been shown to be forming stars at surprisingly high rates. Prominent examples are dust-obscured galaxies which are luminous when observed at sub-millimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths and which may be…
Globular Cluster (GC) formation seems to be a widespread mode of star formation in extreme starbursts triggered by strong interactions and mergers of massive gas-rich galaxies. We use our detailed chemically consistent evolutionary…
We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and…
We study the relationship between the field star formation and cluster formation properties in a large sample of nearby dwarf galaxies. We use optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and from ground-based telescopes to derive the ages…
The molecular gas content of local early-type galaxies is constrained and discussed in relation to their evolution. First, as part of the Atlas3D survey, we present the first complete, large (260 objects), volume-limited single-dish survey…
The existence of stellar halos around galaxies is a natural prediction of the hierarchical nature of the LambdaCDM model. Recent observations of Milky Way-like galaxies have revealed a wide range in stellar halo mass, including cases with…
We present parsec scale interferometric maps of HCN(1-0) and HCO$^{+}$(1-0) emission from dense gas in the star-forming region 30 Doradus, obtained using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. This extreme star-forming region, located in…
With the HOPS, MALT90 and HiGAL Galactic plane surveys we are mapping a significant fraction of the dense, star-forming, molecular gas in the Galaxy. I present results from two projects based on this combined dataset, namely, (i) looking…
A significant amount of star formation occurs and has occurred in environments unlike the solar neighbourhood. The majority of stars formed closer to the peak of the cosmic star formation rate (z > 1.3) and a great deal of star formation…
The relations between star formation and properties of molecular clouds are studied based on a sample of star forming regions in the Galactic Plane. Sources were selected by having radio recombination lines to provide identification of…
We present new mm interferometric and optical integral-field unit (IFU) observations and construct a sample of 12 E and S0 galaxies with molecular gas which have both CO and optical maps. The galaxies contain 2 x 10^7 to 5 x 10^9 M\odot of…
Dense, star-forming gas is believed to form at the stagnation points of large-scale ISM flows, but observational examples of this process in action are rare. We here present a giant molecular cloud (GMC) sandwiched between two colliding…
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…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
The outer Galaxy is an environment with metallicity lower than the Solar one. Because of this, the formation and survival of molecules in star-forming regions located in the inner and outer Galaxy is expected to be different. To gain…
Super Star Clusters (Mecl > 10^5 Msol) are the largest stellar nurseries in our local Universe, containing hundreds of thousands to millions of young stars within a few light years. Many of these systems are found in external galaxies,…
The history of star formation in the strong gravitational potential of the Galactic center has been of much interest, recently. We propose that the sub-parsec-scale disk of massive stars orbiting the massive black hole at the Galactic…