Supersonic turbulent motions are thought to play a major role in star formation process. Theories have suggested that ’turbulence’ is responsible for shaping the interstellar medium (ISM), regulating star formation, and even setting the masses of stars as they form in young clusters.
The obvious place to address questions about the interstellar gas and dust in galaxies, and how stars form out of this gas and dust, is the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest big spiral galaxy to our own.
The obvious place to address questions about the interstellar gas and dust in galaxies, and how stars form out of this gas and dust, is the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest big spiral galaxy to our own.
The most massive galaxies we observe in the Universe today are believed to have formed via a giant dust-obscured burst of star formation at redshift z > 3, when the Universe was less than 2 billion years old.
The initial mass function (IMF) of stars is a fundamental global output of the star formation process, and the question of its origin and universality has been a long-standing open issue.
Supernovae are catastrophic stellar explosions shaping the visible Universe. They play an important role in the synthesis and distribution of almost all elements and especially heavy elements such as iron, enriching the Universe since the first supernova explosion when the cosmos was metal-free.
The last ten years have opened up a new parameter space in time-domain astronomy with the surprising discovery of transients defying our understanding of how stars explode.
The first galaxies and clusters are largely hidden by interstellar dust from optical telescopes and are most easily found in submillimetre surveys, which detect the radiation from the dust.
