Astronomers have discovered an extremely metal-poor, low mass star located in the Galactic Halo. SDSS J102915+172927 appears to have fewer metals than ever predicted for stars of this mass since many models of star formation suggest that a star with these properties should not have even formed in the early universe.
Many aspects of the star forming process, especially the process to form massive stars (greater than 8 solar masses), remain unknown. This paper distinguishes between two stages of star formation by fitting models to observations of several young stellar objects in the giant molecular cloud G333.
In this paper, the author proposes that the departure from this simple scaling with mass arises because of a simple fact: the natal molecular cloud must first fragment into clumps, which must in turn fragment into stars.
Starbursting galaxies are dramatic, but they may not be as important to the universe’s global star formation history as the more common spirals with their slow but steady stellar output.
A beautiful structure at the center of our galaxy shows off Hershel’s abilities.
Stars form in dense clumps within giant molecular clouds. The authors of this paper find a strong relationship between the gravitational growth of these clumps, and the rate of formation of stars within the clumps.