Related papers: Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxie…
In this chapter, we will cover how stars form from the stellar nurseries that are giant molecular clouds. We will first review the physical processes that compete to regulate star formation. We then review star formation in turbulent,…
The timescale for star formation, a measure of how quickly neutral gas is being converted to stars, is considerably longer than typical dynamical timescales associated with a galactic disk. For purposes of modeling galaxy evolution,…
We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two…
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ, the central 500 pc of the Milky Way) contains the largest reservoir of high-density molecular gas in the Galaxy, but forms stars at a rate 10-100 times below commonly-used star formation relations. We…
We consider the relationship between molecular-gas and star-formation surface densities in 19 morphologically defined E/S0s with stellar mass <~ 4x10^10 M_sun, paying particular attention to those found on the blue sequence in color vs.…
Young open clusters are our laboratories for studying high-mass star formation and evolution. Unfortunately, the information that they provide is difficult to interpret, and sometimes contradictory. In this contribution, I present a few…
We use the first systematic data sets of CO molecular line emission in z~1-3 normal star forming galaxies for a comparison of the dependence of galaxy-averaged star formation rates on molecular gas masses at low and high redshifts, and in…
Stellar chemical element ratios have well-defined systematic trends as a function of abundance, with an excellent correlation of these trends with stellar populations defined kinematically. This is remarkable, and has significant…
We use a series of high-resolution N-body simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo, coupled to semi-analytic techniques, to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. Our model Milky Way galaxy is a relatively young system…
We explore the relationship between stellar surface density and gas surface density (the star-gas or S-G correlation) in a 20,000 M$_{\odot}$ simulation from the STAR FORmation in Gaseous Environments (STARFORGE) Project. We create…
Galactic star formation scaling relations show increased scatter from kpc to sub-kpc scales. Investigating this scatter may hold important clues to how the star formation process evolves in time and space. Here, we combine different…
I review at the non-specialist level recent progress in the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe, covering the following areas: (1) Results from recently completed or ongoing redshift surveys of galaxies and X-ray clusters;…
Recent observations with the IRAM instruments have allowed to explore the star formation efficiency in galaxies as a function of redshift, in detecting and mapping their molecular gas. Some galaxies stand on what is called the "main…
We present a comparison of the Milky Way's star formation rate (SFR) surface density ($\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$) obtained with two independent state-of-the-art observational methods. The first method infers $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ from observations of…
In these lectures I review observations of star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies to develop a physical intuition for understanding star formation in the local and high-redshift Universe. A lot of this material is…
The evolution of irregular galaxies is examined from two points of view: on the one hand, models of galactic chemical evolution have been computed and their predictions compared with the corresponding observational data on the element…
Complete catalogs of molecular clouds in the Milky Way allow analysis of the molecular medium and the star formation properties of the Milky Way that closely follows the method used for nearby galaxies. We explore whether the big dip in the…
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…
[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 live in an age where an enormous amount of astrometric, photometric, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data of Milky Way stars are being acquired, many orders of magnitude larger than about a decade ago. Thanks to the Gaia astrometric…