Related papers: Stellar encounters with giant molecular clouds
The observed spectral bump in cosmic-ray (CR) proton and helium spectra, along with the phase and amplitude evolution of CR dipole anisotropy, provide plausible yet indirect evidence for the presence of a nearby CR source. This study…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are recently formed astronomical objects with unusually high star formation rates. We propose the collision of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) as a likely formation mechanism of YMCs, consistent with the YMC…
We present an in-depth case study of three molecular clouds associated with the walls of the Galactic supershells GSH 287+04-17 and GSH 277+00+36. These clouds have been identified in previous work as examples in which molecular gas is…
Recent observations have found that the age distribution of star clusters (SCs) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) shows a sharp peak around 2 Gyr ago. However, it is theoretically unclear what physical processes are responsible for such…
We report molecular line and continuum observations toward one of the most massive giant molecular clouds (GMCs), GMC-16, in M33 using ALMA with an angular resolution of 0$''$44 $\times$ 0$''$27 ($\sim$2 pc $\times$ 1 pc). We have found…
The dust grain size distribution (GSD) likely varies significantly across star-forming environments in the Universe, but its impact on star formation remains unclear. This ambiguity arises because the GSD interacts non-linearly with…
Massive stars dominate the radiative and mechanical feedback of young stellar populations, yet their intense ultraviolet fields and strong winds are typically presumed to preclude Earth-like habitability. We quantify this expectation by…
We present a catalogue of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in M33, extracted from cold dust continuum emission. Our GMCs are identified by computing dendrograms. We measure the spatial distribution of these clouds, and characterise their dust…
Contemporary galactic star formation occurs predominantly within gravitationally unstable, cold, dense molecular gas within supersonic, turbulent, magnetized giant molecular clouds (GMCs). Significantly, because the chemical evolution…
We present semi-analytic dynamical models for giant molecular clouds evolving under the influence of HII regions launched by newborn star clusters. In contrast to previous work, we neither assume that clouds are in virial or energetic…
We compare the properties of clouds in simulated M33 galaxies to those observed in the real M33. We apply a friends of friends algorithm and CPROPS to identify clouds, as well as a pixel by pixel analysis. We obtain very good agreement…
We apply an analytic theory for environmentally-dependent molecular cloud lifetimes to the Central Molecular Zone of the Milky Way. Within this theory, the cloud lifetime in the Galactic centre is obtained by combining the time-scales for…
The habitability of a planet is influenced by both its parent star and the properties of its local stellar neighborhood. Potential threats to habitability from the local stellar environment mainly arise from two factors: cataclysmic events…
We present a two-zone theory for feedback-regulated star formation in galactic discs, consistently connecting the galaxy-averaged star formation law with star formation proceeding in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). Our focus is on galaxies…
The velocity dispersion of nearby stars in the Galactic disc is well known to increase substantially with age; this is the so-called Age-Velocity relation, and is interpreted as a ``heating'' of the disc as a function of time. We have…
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ; inner $\sim{}200~\rm{}pc$) of the Milky Way is a star formation (SF) environment with very extreme physical properties. Exploration of SF in this region is important because (i) this region allows us to test…
We describe and execute a novel approach to observationally estimate the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We focus on the cloud population between the two main spiral arms in M51 (the inter-arm region) where cloud destruction via…
To shed light on the time evolution of local star formation episodes in M33, we study the association between 566 Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), identified through the CO (J=2-1) IRAM-all-disk survey, and 630 Young Stellar Cluster…
By resimulating a region of a global disc simulation at higher resolution, we resolve and study the properties of molecular clouds with a range of masses from a few 100's M$_{\odot}$ to $10^6$ M$_{\odot}$. The purpose of our paper is…
To reveal the origin of the mini-starbursts in the Milky Way, we carried out large-scale CO observations toward the RCW 106 giant molecular cloud (GMC) complex using the NANTEN2 4-m radio telescope operated by Nagoya University. We also…