The Stuff of Stars
I attempt to summarize what some astronomers have called “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”
I attempt to summarize what some astronomers have called “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”
The rate at which stars have formed in the universe has decreased over the last 10 billions years. Today, we examine how the electron density of star-forming regions in galaxies has evolved during that time.
High resolution observations of the Orion Nebula show a complex collision between two extreme types of gas.
In this article, the authors measure the cosmic ray ionization rate within a few parsecs of the galactic center. They find that the cosmic ray ionization rate is an order of magnitude larger than the galactic standard and also that the molecular gas near the galactic center is much warmer than the typical galactic molecular cloud.