Related papers: Astronomy: Starbursts near and far
One well-tested method in science is to separate the object of interest from its surroundings and look at it in isolation. The advantage is that unimportant information is removed and the true properties of the object are seen more clearly.…
Gamma-ray bursts are transient events from beyond the solar system. Besides the allure of their mysterious origin, bursts are physically fascinating because they undoubtedly require exotic physics. Optical transients coincident with burst…
The determination of chemical abundances in star-forming galaxies and the study of their evolution on cosmological timescales are powerful tools for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. This contribution presents the latest results…
We consider some aspects of the evolution of massive stars which can only be elucidated by means of "indirect" observations, i.e. measurements of the effects of massive stars on their environments. We discuss in detail the early evolution…
(Shortened) We consider the massive star formation properties, radial profiles, and atomic gas masses of those galaxies in our H alpha Galaxy Survey, a representative sample of the local Universe of 327 disk galaxies, that have close…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…
Starburst galaxies are powered by massive stars. These stars dominate the heating and enrichment with heavy elements of the interstellar medium, gas out of which new stars form. Thus, high-mass stars, and in consequence starburst galaxies,…
Massive low surface brightness galaxies have disk central surface brightnesses at least one magnitude fainter than the night sky, but total magnitudes and masses that show they are among the largest galaxies known. Like all low surface…
The interplay between stellar populations and gas in local starburst galaxies is analyzed using images from the Hubble Space Telescope to map the ages of the young stellar components and to isolate the contribution of shocks on spatial…
The star formation history of galaxies is a complex process usually considered to be stochastic in nature, for which we can only give average descriptions such as the color-density relation. In this work we follow star-forming gas particles…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are the manifestations of massive stellar death. Due to the immense energy release they are detectable from most of the observable universe. In this way they allow us to study the deaths of single (or binary)…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
With the help of a statistical parameter derived from optical spectra, we show that the current star formation rate of a galaxy, falling into a cluster along a supercluster filament, is likely to undergo a sudden enhancement before the…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
In models of hierarchical structure formation, interactions and mergers at high redshift play a key role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Numerical modeling and observations of nearby systems explore the detailed physics of…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
Extragalactic starbursts induced by gravitational interactions can now be studied from z = ~0 to ~2. The evidence that mergers of gas-rich galaxies tend to trigger galaxy-wide starbursts is strong, both statistically and in individual cases…
Interacting galaxies are a natural arena for studies of non-equilibrium stellar dynamics, gas dynamics, and thermodynamics. Only galaxy formation itself is as deeply concerned with as many different aspects of dynamics, and the connection…
Star-forming galaxies spend most of their lifetimes on the star-forming main sequence, which establishes a tight empirical and statistical relation between stellar mass and star-formation rate. Occasional episodes of rapid star formation…
I review recent observational progress concerning the evolution of the morphological distribution of galaxies in the rich cluster environment and in the faint field population. By coupling HST imagery with ground-based spectroscopic…