Related papers: Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxie…
Stars, and collections of stars, encode rich signatures of stellar physics and galaxy evolution. With properties influenced by both their environment and intrinsic nature, stars retain information about astrophysical phenomena that are not…
Thick disks appear to be common in external large spiral galaxies and our own Milky Way also hosts one. The existence of a thick disk is possibly directly linked to the formation history of the host galaxy and if its properties is known it…
We use a cosmological galactic evolutionary approach to model the Milky Way. A detailed treatment of the mass aggregation and dynamical history of the growing dark halo is included, together with a self consistent physical treatment for the…
In order to quantify the relationship between gas accretion and star formation, we analyse a sample of 29 nearby galaxies from the WHISP survey which contains galaxies with and without evidence for recent gas accretion. We compare combined…
We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and…
Observations of star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies provide vital clues to the physical nature of the Hubble sequence, and are key probes of the evolutionary properties of galaxies. The focus of this review is on the broad patterns in…
The rate of star formation varies between galaxy types and evolves with redshift. Most stars in the universe have formed in episodes of an exceptionally high star-forming activity, commonly called a starburst. We here summarize basic…
Star formation has often been studied by separating the low- and high-mass regimes with an approximate boundary at 8M_sun. While some of the outcomes of the star-formation process are different between the two regimes, it is less clear…
The impact of HST photometry and European astronomy in studies concerning the star formation histories of resolved galaxies is described. Our current knowledge of the star formation history of systems within 10-20 Mpc, as derived from the…
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…
We analyze the optical continuum of star-forming galaxies in SDSS by fitting stacked spectra with stellar population synthesis models to investigate the relation between stellar mass, stellar metallicity, dust attenuation and star formation…
The relative distribution of molecular gas and star formation in galaxies gives insight into the physical processes and timescales of the cycle between gas and stars. In this work, we track the relative spatial configuration of CO and…
In this paper we investigate the level of star formation activity within nearby molecular clouds. We employ a uniform set of infrared extinction maps to provide accurate assessments of cloud mass and structure and compare these with…
We construct a model by integrating observational constraints from the Milky Way and nearby galaxies to predict cloud-scale star formation rates (SFRs). In the model, we first estimate the initial total mass of clumps in a cloud based on…
This review discusses recent results on the astrochemistry of (mostly high-mass) star-forming regions. After an introduction on the use of chemistry in astrophysics and some basic concepts of astrochemistry, specific results are presented.…
The evolution of galaxies results from a combination of internal and external processes. The star formation is an internal process transforming cold and dense cores of molecular clouds to stars. It may be triggered internally by expanding…
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…
We propose a simple theoretical model for star formation in which the local star formation rate in a galaxy is determined by three factors. First, the interplay between the interstellar radiation field and molecular self-shielding…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
Observations show that star formation in galaxies is closely correlated with the abundance of molecular hydrogen. Modeling this empirical relation from first principles proves challenging, however, and many questions regarding its…