Related papers: Modes of star formation along the Hubble Sequence …
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
The mere existence of multiple stellar generations in Milky Way globular clusters indicates that each generation was unable to stop star formation, that instead persisted unimpeded for several million years. This evidence argues for an…
Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet (UV) images of nine starburst galaxies reveal them to be highly irregular, even after excluding compact sources (clusters and resolved stars). Most (7/9) are found to have a similar intrinsic effective…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
The Galactic center is a hotbed of star formation activity, containing the most massive star formation site and three of the most massive young star clusters in the Galaxy. Given such a rich environment, it contains more stars with initial…
The physical mechanisms and timescales that determine the morphological signatures and the quenching of star formation of typical (~L*) elliptical galaxies are not well understood. To address this issue, we have simulated the formation of a…
Star formation by gravitational instabilities, sequential triggering, and turbulence triggering are briefly reviewed in order to compare the various mechanisms that are observed in main galaxy disks with those in the inner kiloparsec…
In a series of three papers, we introduced a novel cluster formation model that describes the formation, growth, and disruption of star clusters in high-resolution cosmological simulations. We tested this model on a Milky Way-sized galaxy…
The formation of massive stellar clusters is intricately linked to star formation on local and global scales. All actively star forming galaxies are forming clusters, and the local initial conditions likely determine whether bound massive…
The formation of massive stellar clusters in turbulent molecular clouds is investigated. We include artificial star formation and energy feedback of newly born stars. The obtained systems are not likely to survive. Case studies to determine…
We present the results from simulations of GMC formation in spiral galaxies. First we discuss cloud formation by cloud-cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities, arguing that the former is prevalent at lower galactic surface…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
Globular clusters (GCs) are thought to be ancient relics from the early formative phase of galaxies, although their physical origin remains uncertain. GCs are most numerous around massive elliptical galaxies, where they can exhibit a broad…
Star-forming galaxies spend most of their lifetimes on the star-forming main sequence, which establishes a tight empirical and statistical relation between stellar mass and star-formation rate. Occasional episodes of rapid star formation…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of star clusters during their formation, assuming that they are born from a turbulent starless clump of a given mass that is embedded within a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a…
We analyse extinction maps of nearby Giant Molecular Clouds to forge a link between driving processes of turbulence and modes of star formation. Our investigation focuses on cloud structure in the column density range above the self…
Evidence for triggered star formation is difficult to establish because energy feedback from massive stars tend to erase the interstellar conditions that led to the star formation. Young stellar objects (YSOs) mark sites of {\it current}…
Massive low surface brightness galaxies have disk central surface brightnesses at least one magnitude fainter than the night sky, but total magnitudes and masses that show they are among the largest galaxies known. Like all low surface…
The properties of old globular cluster systems in galaxy halos are used to infer quantitative constraints on aspects of generic star (cluster) formation. First, the spatial distribution of globulars in three large galaxies, together with…