Related papers: Cradle(s) of the Sun
Clumps in the solar neighborhood's stellar velocity distribution could be caused by spiral density waves. In the solar neighborhood, stellar velocities corresponding to orbits that are nearly closed in the frame rotating with a spiral…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre (GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in the…
More than 50 years have elapsed since the first studies of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The wealth of data accumulated since then has not only revealed a large cluster system, but also a diversified one, filling loci in the age,…
The mass function of molecular clouds and clumps is shallower than the mass function of young star clusters, gas-embedded and gas-free alike, as their respective mass function indices are $\beta_0 \simeq 1.7$ and $\beta_\star \simeq 2$. We…
Most stars form in clusters where relatively close encounters with other stars are common and can leave imprints on the orbital architecture of planetary systems. In this paper, we investigate the inclination excitation of debris disk…
Some of the most massive globular clusters of our Milky Way, such as for example omega-Centauri, show a mixture of stellar populations spanning a few Gyr in age and 1.5 dex in metallicities. In contrast, standard formation scenarios predict…
The empirical model of Lu et al. 2014 is updated with recent data and used to study galaxy star formation and assembly histories. At $z > 2$, the predicted galaxy stellar mass functions are steep, and a significant amount of star formation…
We examine the properties of embedded clusters within 1 kiloparsec using new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as recent results from 2MASS and other ground-based near-infrared surveys. We use surveys of entire molecular clouds…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Previous high resolution cosmological simulations predict the first stars to appear in the early universe to be very massive and to form in isolation. Here we discuss a cosmological simulation in which the central 50 solar mass clump breaks…
Stellar clusters form by gravitational collapse of turbulent molecular clouds, with up to several thousand stars per cluster. They are thought to be the birthplace of most stars and therefore play an important role in our understanding of…
A model of core-clump accretion with equally likely stopping describes star formation in the dense parts of clusters, where models of isolated collapsing cores may not apply. Each core accretes at a constant rate onto its protostar, while…
The formation environment of stars in massive stellar clusters is similar to the environment of stars forming in galaxies at a redshift of 1 - 3, at the peak star formation rate density of the Universe. As massive clusters are still forming…
We review the formation and early evolution of the most massive and dense young stellar clusters, focusing on the role they can play in our understanding of star and planet formation as a whole. Young massive cluster (YMC) progenitor clouds…
Massive Galactic clusters (> 1000 Msun) exhibit a clear correlation between cluster density, size and age and can be sorted in two categories, i.e. starburst and leaky clusters. The reason for the existance of two types of massive clusters…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
Out of the $\sim$ 3000 exoplanets detected so far, only fourteen planets are members of open clusters: among them an exoplanet system around Pr 0211 in the cluster M44 which consists of at least two planets with the outer planet moving on a…
Observations of both star-forming regions and young, gas-free stellar associations indicate that most nearby molecular clouds form stars only over a short time span before dispersal; large-scale flows in the diffuse interstellar medium have…
We observed six fields of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with the Advanced Camera for Survey on board the Hubble Space Telescope in the F555W and F814W filters. These fields sample regions characterized by very different star and gas…