Related papers: The New Frontier: Galactic-Scale Star Formation
Our galaxy is full with planets. We now know that planets and planetary systems are diverse and come with different sizes, masses and compositions, as well as various orbital architectures. Although there has been great progress in…
The galaxies of the Local Group that are currently forming stars can serve as our laboratories for understanding star formation and the evolution of massive stars. In this talk I will summarize what I think we've learned about these topics…
We describe results of optical and near-IR observations of a large spectroscopic sample of star-forming galaxies photometrically-selected to lie in the redshift range 1.4 < z < 2.5, often called the ``redshift desert'' because of historical…
Great strides have been made in the last two decades in determining how galaxies evolve from their initial dark matter seeds to the complex structures we observe at z=0. The role of mergers has been documented through both observations and…
The origin of the extragalactic gamma-ray background is a pressing cosmological mystery. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has recently measured the intensity and spectrum of this background; both are substantially different from previous…
Star-forming regions have been the targets of X-ray observations since the dawn of satellite X-ray astronomy. The increase in sensitivity and/or spatial resolution offered by XMM-Newton and Chandra allows a dramatic improvement, both…
Galaxy formation is at the forefront of observation and theory in cosmology. An improved understanding is essential for improving our knowledge both of the cosmological parameters, of the contents of the universe, and of our origins. In…
The interstellar medium of galaxies is composed of multiple phases, including molecular, atomic, and ionized gas, as well as dust. Stars are formed within this medium from cold molecular gas clouds, which collapse due to their gravitational…
We review recent work that investigates the formation of stellar clusters, ranging in scale from globular clusters through open clusters to the small scale aggregates of stars observed in T associations. In all cases, recent advances in…
An objective prism H alpha survey has shown that there is a population of early type spiral galaxies in nearby clusters with strong central bursts of star formation which could be due to galaxy--galaxy tidal interactions. Such galaxies are…
Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of…
Stellar halos may hold some of the best preserved fossils of the formation history of galaxies. They are a natural product of the merging processes that probably take place during the assembly of a galaxy, and hence may well be the most…
I describe some of the current challenges in galaxy formation theory with applications to formation of disks and of spheroids. Forthcoming deep surveys of galaxies with Keck and VLT will provide high quality spectra of $\sim 10^5$ galaxies…
How is the universe organized on large scales? How did this structure evolve from the unknown initial conditions to the present time? The answers to these questions will shed light on the cosmology we live in, the amount, composition and…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
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…
(Abridged) In these lectures aimed for non-specialists, I review progress in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Both the star formation history and assembly of stellar mass can be empirically traced from redshifts z~6 to the…
Molecular clouds at very high latitudes ($b > 60^o$) away from the Galactic plane are considered rare and not conventional sites of star formation. Contrary to this, the recent discovery of high latitude embedded Clusters can possibly…
The star-forming regions (SFRs) in the peculiar galaxies NGC 660, NGC 1512, NGC 4395 and NGC 4618 are studied. The relationships between such characteristics of star forming regions as UV, nearand far-IR fluxes, as well as in the Halpha and…