Related papers: The Youngest Globular Clusters
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…
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…
Stellar clusters are born embedded within giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and during their formation and early evolution are often only visible at infrared wavelengths, being heavily obscured by dust. Over the last 15 years advances in…
Stellar clusters are born in cold and dusty molecular clouds and the youngest clusters are embedded to various degrees in dusty dark molecular material. Such embedded clusters can be considered protocluster systems. The most deeply buried…
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…
In recent years, a number of extragalactic massive star clusters that are still deeply embedded in their birth material have been discovered. These objects represent the youngest stage of massive star cluster evolution yet observed, and the…
Recent high-resolution observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveal that young star clusters of extraordinary luminosity and compactness ("super star clusters") are commonly found in starburst systems. Cluster formation appears…
Super Star Clusters are one of the most extreme star forming environments in the universe, and the most massive and dense of these may be proto globular clusters. Like individual massive stars, the earliest stages of super star cluster…
Subarcsecond infrared and radio observations yield important information about the formation of super star clusters from their surrounding gas. We discuss the general properties of ionized and molecular gas near young, forming SSCs, as…
Most old globular clusters (GCs) in the Galaxy are observed to have internal chemical abundance spreads in light elements. We discuss a new GC formation scenario based on hierarchical star formation within fractal molecular clouds. In the…
After the stars of a new, embedded star cluster have formed they blow the remaining gas out of the cluster. Especially winds of massive stars and definitely the on-set of the first supernovae can remove the residual gas from a cluster. This…
We test the hypothesis that globular clusters form in supergiant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that such large, dense, and cold gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical models…
High resolution observations with HST have recently allowed us to resolve and study several very tight clusters of newly born massive stars in the Magellanic Clouds. Situated in an extremely rare category of HII regions, being only 5 to 10…
We have identified a previously unrecognized population of very compact, embedded low-mass Galactic stellar clusters. These tight (r$ \approx $0.14 pc) groupings appear as bright singular objects at the few arcsec resolution of the Spitzer…
Embedded clusters are ideal laboratories to understand the early phase of the dynamical evolution of clusters as well as the massive star formation. An interesting observational phenomenon is that some of the embedded clusters show mass…
We report on the identification of 54 embedded clusters around 217 massive protostellar candidates of which 34 clusters are new detections. The embedded clusters are identified as stellar surface density enhancements in the 2 $\mu$m All Sky…
Stars are born within dense clumps of giant molecular clouds, constituting young stellar agglomerates known as embedded clusters, which only evolve into bound open clusters under special conditions. We statistically study all embedded…
Protostars and young stars are strongly spatially "clustered" or "correlated" within their natal giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We demonstrate that such clustering leads to the conclusion that the incident bolometric radiative flux upon a…
Star formation in starbursts appears to be biased toward compact clusters, with up to 20% of all stars formed in them. Observations with HST show that many of these clusters have luminosities (-9 > Mv > -16), UBVI colors, and half-light…
The current census of, and stellar population in, massive Galactic star clusters is reviewed. In particular, we concentrate on a recent survey of obscured Galactic Giant H II (GHII) regions and the associated stellar clusters embedded in…