New stars form in the dense turbulent gas clouds of galaxies. A wide variety of processes, with scales ranging from the size of a galaxy to the size of an individual star, drive interstellar turbulence and trigger dense cloud formation. The formation of these clouds is the subject of the IAU S237. This book is the most up-to-date review of all aspects of cloud and star formation. It summarizes the current state of understanding of triggered star formation in a turbulent interstellar medium. Topics covered range from observations and theory of turbulence in the ISM, to the formation of shells and young stars inside of shells, and molecular clouds, star clusters, and galaxies, all with a view toward understanding how star formation begins in these various environments. It is the first comprehensive overview of triggered star formation, and one of the few compendiums available on ISM turbulence.
This comprehensive collection of reviews and research reports covers the processes involved in the formation of the Sun and Earth-like planets. Specific topics range from star formation to protoplanetary disks, planet formation, and the basics of life. It provides an interdisciplinary overview of the complex chain of events leading to habitable planets and life, covering research from the fields of astrophysics, astrochemistry, planetary sciences, chemistry, and biology, through theory, observations, and experiments. These observations reveal the chemistry and dust content of young disks, the location of water that is essential to life, and some of the dynamical processes that affect the growth of forming planets. IAU Symposium 345 reviews some of the most modern concepts in star and planet formation and is essential reading for students, teachers, and researchers who will someday answer humanity's biggest question: what is our origin?
Our understanding of galaxy formation comes mostly from two sources: sensitive observations at high angular resolution of the high-redshift Universe, where galaxies are observed to be forming, and det
