Related papers: Star Formation Thresholds in Galactic Disks
The outer regions of galactic disks have received increased attention since ultraviolet observations with GALEX demonstrated that nearly 30% of galaxies have UV emission beyond their optical extents, indicating star formation activity.…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial conditions and early phases of the star formation…
Dense environments have an impact on the star formation rate of galaxies. As stars form from molecular gas, looking at the cold molecular gas content of a galaxy gives useful insights on its efficiency in forming stars. However, most…
We reassess the applicability of the Toomre criterion in galactic disks and we study the local star formation law in 16 disk galaxies for which abundance gradients are published. The data we use consists of stellar light profiles, atomic…
Measurements of H-alpha, HI, and CO distributions in 61 normal spiral galaxies are combined with published far-infrared and CO observations of 36 infrared-selected starburst galaxies, in order to study the form of the global star formation…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
We aim at studying the abundance gradients along the Galactic disk and their dependence upon several parameters: a threshold in the surface gas density regulating star formation, the star formation efficiency, the timescale for the…
The assembly of galaxies can be described by the distribution of their star formation as a function of cosmic time. Thanks to the WFC3 grism on HST it is now possible to measure this beyond the local Universe. Here we present the spatial…
We explore various instability models for the onset of star formation in irregular galaxies. Critical gas densities are calculated for gravitational instabilities with a thin, pure-gas disk, and with a thick disk composed of gas and a…
We attempt to determine the dominant processes acting on star-forming disk galaxies as a result of the cluster environment by studying the normalised rates and radial distributions of star formation in galaxies within low-redshift clusters.…
Crucial to a quantitative understanding of galaxy evolution are the properties of the inter-stellar medium that regulate galactic-scale star formation activity. We present here the results of a suite of star formation models applied to the…
In hierarchical galaxy formation the stellar halos of galaxies are formed by the accretion of minor satellites and therefore contain valuable information about the (early) assembly process of galaxies. Our GHOSTS survey measures the stellar…
We investigate the relationship between HI, H_2, and the star formation rate (SFR) using azimuthally averaged data for seven CO-bright spiral galaxies. Contrary to some earlier studies based on global fluxes, we find that the SFR surface…
To explore the properties of extreme outer stellar disks, we obtained ultra-deep V and GALEX UV images of 4 dwarf irregular galaxies and one Blue Compact Dwarf galaxy and ultra-deep B images of 3 of these. Our V-band surface photometry…
Star formation is mainly determined by the observation of H$\alpha$ radiation which is related to the presence of short lived massive stars. Disc galaxies show a strong cutoff in H$\alpha$ radiation at a certain galactocentric distance…
Star complexes are the largest globular regions of star formation in galaxies. If there is a spiral density wave, nuclear ring, tidal arm, or other well-defined stellar structure, then gravitational instabilities in the gaseous component…
The discovery of gravitationally lensed stellar clusters at high redshift with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed extremely compact, massive star-forming systems in galaxies at $z > 6$, providing a new window into early…
A dynamical model for star formation on a galactic scale is proposed in which the interstellar medium is constantly condensing to star-forming clouds on the dynamical time of the average midplane density, and the clouds are constantly being…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…