Related papers: Was The Sun Born In A Massive Cluster?
Two main models coexist for the environment in which stars form. The clustered model stipulates that the bulk of star formation occurs within dense embedded clusters, but only a minority of them survive the residual gas expulsion phase…
There is no accepted upper mass limit for stars. Such a basic quantity escapes both theory, because of incomplete understanding of star formation, and observation, because of incompleteness in surveying the Galaxy. The Arches cluster is…
Despite their importance for determining the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere and surface conditions, the evolutionary histories of the Earth's atmospheric CO$_2$ abundance during the Archean eon and the Sun's activity are poorly…
It has been commonly conjectured that all massive >10 Msun stars are born in OB associations or clusters. Many O and B stars in the Galaxy or the Magellanic Clouds appear to exist in isolation, however. While some of these field OB stars…
Context. Most stars are born in clusters, thus the protoplanetary discs surrounding the newly formed stars might be influenced by this environment. Isolated star-disc encounters have previously been studied, and it was shown that very close…
We use 3D hydrodynamical models to investigate the effects of massive star feedback from winds and supernovae on inhomogeneous molecular material left over from the formation of a massive stellar cluster. We simulate the interaction of the…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Photometrically distinct nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are common in late-type-disk and spheroidal galaxies. The formation of NSCs is inevitable in the context of normal star formation in which a majority of stars form in clusters. A young,…
Young star clusters with masses similar to those of classical old globular clusters are observed not only in starbursts, mergers or otherwise disturbed galaxies, but also in normal spiral galaxies. Some young clusters with masses as high as…
Several dynamical scenarios have been proposed that can lead to prompt mass segregation on the crossing time scale of a young cluster. They generally rely on cool and/or clumpy initial conditions, and are most relevant to small systems. As…
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…
Massive stars can be efficiently ejected from their birth clusters through encounters with other massive stars. We study how the dynamical ejection fraction of O star systems varies with the masses of very young star clusters, Mecl, by…
We investigate the evolution of collisionally merged stars with mass of ~100 MSun which might be formed in dense star clusters. We assumed that massive stars with several tens Msun collide typically after ~1Myr of the formation of the…
The origin of the Nuclear Star Cluster in the centre of our Galaxy is still unknown. One possibility is that it formed after the disruption of stellar clusters that spiralled into the Galactic Centre due to dynamical friction. We trace the…
Bressert et al. recently showed that the surface density distribution of low-mass, young stellar objects (YSOs) in the solar neighbourhood is approximately log-normal. The authors conclude that the star formation process is hierarchical and…
Many scenarios for the origin of the chemical anomalies observed in globular clusters (GCs; i.e., multiple populations) require that GCs were much more massive at birth, up to $10-100\times$, than they are presently. This is invoked in…
Most of massive stars form in binary or higher-order systems in clumpy, sub-structured clusters. In the very first phases of their life, these stars are expected to interact with the surrounding environment, before being released to the…
We investigate the distribution of bright main sequence stars near the northern edge of the M33 disk. Clustering on sub-kpc scales is seen among stars with ages near 10 Myr, and two large star-forming complexes are identified. Similar…
Observations of the dust and gas around embedded stellar clusters reveal some of the processes involved in their formation and evolution. Large scale mass infall with rates dM/dt=4e-4 solar masses/year is found to be disrupted on small…
We present a global study of low mass, young stellar object (YSO) surface densities in nearby (< 500 pc) star forming regions based on a comprehensive collection of Spitzer Space Telescope surveys. We show that the distribution of YSO…