Related papers: Star Formation and Molecular Clouds at High Galact…
The Galactic center is a hotbed of star formation activity, containing the most massive star formation site and three of the most massive young star clusters in the Galaxy. Given such a rich environment, it contains more stars with initial…
The Eos cloud, recently discovered in the far ultraviolet via H$_2$ fluorescence, is one of the nearest known dark molecular clouds to the Sun, with a distance spanning from $\sim94-136$pc. However, with a mass…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
[abridged] While observations of Local Group galaxies show a very simple, local star formation law in which the star formation rate per unit area in each patch of a galaxy scales linearly with the molecular gas surface density, recent…
We carry out three-dimensional MHD simulations of star formation in turbulent, magnetized clouds, including ambipolar diffusion and feedback from protostellar outflows. The calculations focus on relatively diffuse clouds threaded by a…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most intense regions of star formation in galaxies. Formulating a model for YMC formation whilst at the same time meeting the constraints from observations is highly challenging however. We show that…
Observations of the stellar content of the Milky Way's bulge helps to understand the stellar content and evolution of distant galaxies. In this brief overview I will first highlight some recent work directed towards measuring the history of…
We present a study of dense structures in the L1495 filament in the Taurus Molecular Cloud and examine its star-forming properties. In particular we construct a dust extinction map of the filament using deep near-infrared observations,…
We report the results of a 100 square degree survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud region in the J = 1-0 transition of 12CO and 13CO. The image of the cloud in each velocity channel includes ~ 3 million Nyquist sampled pixels on a 20" grid.…
During the last two decades, the focus of star formation research has shifted from understanding the collapse of a single dense core into a star to studying the formation hundreds to thousands of stars in molecular clouds. In this chapter,…
Observations of the nearby large galaxies that can be examined in particularly close detail suggest that many have small stellar luminosity fractions in bulges and haloes. Simulations of galaxy formation tend to produce considerably larger…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
Stars form in cold clouds of predominantly molecular (H2) gas. We are just beginning to understand how the formation, properties, and destruction of these clouds varies across the universe. In this chapter, we describe how the thermal line…
Formation process(es) of galactic bulges are not yet clarified although several mechanisms have been proposed. In a previous study, we suggested one possibility that galactic bulges have been formed from the cold gas inflowing through…
Star formation occurs on physical scales corresponding to individual star forming regions, typically of order ~100 parsecs in size, but current observational facilities cannot resolve these scales within field galaxies beyond the local…
The nearest young stellar groups are associated with "hubs" of column density exceeding 10^22 cm^-2, according to recent observations. These hubs radiate multiple "filaments" of parsec length, having lower column density and fewer stars.…
Efforts to unveil the structure of the local interstellar medium and its recent star formation history have spanned the past seventy years. Recent studies utilizing precise data from space astrometry missions have revealed nearby, newly…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
Young massive stars or clusters are often observed at the peripheries of HII regions. What triggers star formation at such locations? Among the scenarios that have been proposed, the `collect and collapse' process is particularly attractive…