Related papers: Massive Stars: Key to Solving the Cosmic Puzzle
Understanding the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies represents one of the most exciting frontiers in astronomy. Since the universe was filled with neutral hydrogen at early times, the most promising method for…
Studies of molecular clouds and young stars near the sun have provided invaluable insights into the process of star formation. Indeed, much of our physical understanding of this topic has been derived from such studies. Perhaps the two most…
Resolving the environments of massive stars is crucial for understanding their formation mechanisms and their impact on galaxy evolution. An important open question is whether massive stars found in diffuse regions outside spiral arms…
Understanding the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies represents one of the most exciting frontiers in astronomy. Since the universe was filled with hydrogen atoms at early times, the most promising probe of the epoch of…
We present a comprehensive multi-wavelength study of 5 poststarburst galaxies with $M_\ast > 10^{11} M_\odot$ at $z\sim 0.7$, examining their stars, gas, and current and past star-formation activities. Using optical images from the Subaru…
Analyzing global starburst properties in various kinds of starburst and post-starburst galaxies and relating them to the properties of the star cluster populations they form, I explore the conditions for the formation of massive, compact,…
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…
Massive star clusters are often used as tracers of galaxy formation and assembly. In order to do so, we must understand their properties at formation, and how those properties change with time, galactic environment, and galaxy assembly…
Massive stars play a major role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and serve as important probes of the distant Universe. It has been established that the majority of massive stars reside in close binaries and will interact with their…
QSOs and radio-galaxies, together with the CMB, ``normal'' galaxies and clusters, represent the main source of information about the origin and evolution of the Large Scale Structure. They can be used either directly, as tracers of the…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
The formation of the first stars in the high-redshift Universe is a sensitive probe of the small-scale, particle physics nature of dark matter (DM). We carry out cosmological simulations of primordial star formation in ultra-light,…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
The large-scale structure of the Universe formed from initially small perturbations in the cosmic density field, leading to galaxy clusters with up to 10^15 Msun at the present day. Here, we review the formation of structures in the…
The first star clusters and quasars resulted directly from the growth of linear density fluctuations in the early Universe. Since they emerged from a well-defined set of initial conditions, the interplay between observational data from the…
The first stars in the Universe form when chemically pristine gas heats as it falls into dark matter potential wells, cools radiatively due to the formation of molecular hydrogen, and becomes self-gravitating. We demonstrate with…
Imaging and spectroscopic observations in the mid-infrared wavelength range (5$\mu$m--30$\mu$m) offer valuable insight into the origins of stars and planets. Sensitive new array detectors on 8-meter class telescopes make it possible to…
I review the status of massive star formation theories: accretion from collapsing, massive, turbulent cores; competitive accretion; and stellar collisions. I conclude the observational and theoretical evidence favors the first of these…
We investigate how the environment affects the assembly history of massive galaxies. For that purpose, we make use of SHARDS and HST spectro-photometric data, whose depth, spectral resolution, and wavelength coverage allow to perform a…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are dense, compact stellar systems only a few parsecs across, located at galaxy centers. Their small sizes make them difficult to resolve spatially. NSCs often coexist with massive black holes, and both trace…