Chaos before Shining Stars
Colliding gas clouds are believed to be the nurseries of baby stars. Could we tell observationally whether a cloud has experienced collisions?
Mapping Gravity in Stellar Nurseries
Gravity turns gas into stars. Today’s astrobite introduces a new way to study gravity’s pull in a molecular cloud – the birthplace of new stars.
The constant X-factor, why is it constant?
There is a long standing debate on whether the X-factor, the conversion factor between molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide in molecular clouds, is constant in our Galaxy. This is a very important assumption we usually make when studying star formation! In this post, we explore state-of-the-art simulations by Narayanan & Hopkins that attempt to settle this debate.
Searching for molecular gas in dwarf galaxies
It’s an unpleasant fact of galactic astrophysics that most of the molecular gas in nearby galaxies is completely undetectable.