Related papers: How to identify the youngest protostars
The formation and evolution of young low mass stars are characterized by important processes of mass loss and accretion ocurring in the innermost regions of their placentary circumstellar disks. Because of the large obscuration of these…
We present data obtained with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope (Spitzer) for a sample of 74 young (t < 30 Myr old) Sun-like (0.7 < M(star)/M(Sun) < 1.5) stars. These are a sub-set of the observations that…
We present a search for all embedded protostars with internal luminosities < 1 solar luminosity in the sample of nearby, low-mass star-forming regions surveyed by the Spitzer Space Telescope c2d Legacy Project. The internal luminosity…
We present 50-210 um spectral scans of 30 Class 0/I protostellar sources, obtained with Herschel-PACS, and 0.5-1000 um SEDs, as part of the Dust, Ice, and Gas in Time (DIGIT) Key Program. Some sources exhibit up to 75 H2O lines ranging in…
The degree to which the properties of protostars are affected by environment remains an open question. To investigate this, we look at the Orion A and B molecular clouds, home to most of the protostars within 500 pc. At ~400 pc, Orion is…
The origin and evolution of the X-rays in very young stellar objects (YSOs) are not yet well understood since it is very hard to observe YSOs in the protostellar phase. We study the X-ray properties of Class 0-I objects in the Orion Nebula…
The spectral energy distribution (SED) in the millimetre (mm) to centimetre (cm) range is a useful tool for characterising the dust in protostellar envelopes as well as free-free emission from the protostar and outflow. While many studies…
Low-mass protostars form from condensations inside molecular clouds when gravity overwhelms thermal and magnetic supporting forces. The first phases of the formation of a solar-type star are characterized by dramatic changes not only in the…
Cosmic rays (CRs) are fundamental to the chemistry and physics of star-forming regions, influencing molecular gas ionization, mediating interactions with interstellar magnetic fields, and regulating star formation from the diffuse…
Stars may be assembled in large growth spurts, however the evidence for this hypothesis is circumstantial. Directly studying the accretion at the earliest phases of stellar growth is challenging because young stars are deeply embedded in…
We discuss the factors influencing the formation and gravitational fragmentation of protostellar discs. We start with a review of how observations of prestellar cores can be analysed statistically to yield plausible initial conditions for…
(Abridged) Star and planet formation theories predict an evolution in the density, temperature, and velocity structure as the envelope collapses and forms an accretion disk. The aim of this work is to model the evolution of the molecular…
We use our Monte Carlo radiative transfer code to study non-embedded prestellar cores and cores that are embedded at the centre of a molecular cloud. Our study indicates that the temperature inside embedded cores is lower than in isolated…
The small grain sizes produced by Type II supernova (SN II) models in young, metal-poor galaxies make the appearance of their infrared (IR) spectral energy distribution (SED) quite different from that of nearby, older galaxies. To study…
We are motivated by the recent measurements of dust opacity indices beta around young stellar objects (YSOs), which suggest that efficient grain growth may have occurred earlier than the Class I stage. The present work makes use of abundant…
The early stages of low-mass star formation are likely to be subject to intense ionization by protostellar energetic MeV particles. As a result, the surrounding gas is enriched in molecular ions, such as HCO$^{+}$ and N$_{2}$H$^{+}$.…
(Abridged) We present an overview of the sample of high-mass star and cluster forming regions observed as part of the Earliest Phases of Star Formation (EPoS) Herschel Guaranteed Time Key Program. A sample of 45 infrared-dark clouds (IRDCs)…
The nature of very low luminosity objects with the internal luminosity L_obj <= 0.1 Lsun is investigated by means of numerical modeling coupling the core collapse simulations with the stellar evolution calculations. The gravitational…
Accretion onto protostars may occur in sharp bursts. Accretion bursts during the embedded phase of young protostars are probably most intense, but can only be inferred indirectly through long-wavelength observations. We perform radiative…
Identified as extinction features against the bright Galactic mid-infrared background, infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are thought to harbor the very earliest stages of star and cluster formation. In order to better characterize the properties…