The Herschel View of Star Formation

Abstract

Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial conditions and early phases of the star formation process. The Herschel images reveal an intricate network of filamentary structure in every interstellar cloud. These filaments all exhibit remarkably similar widths - about a tenth of a parsec - but only the densest ones contain prestellar cores, the seeds of future stars. The Herschel results favor a scenario in which interstellar filaments and prestellar cores represent two key steps in the star formation process: first turbulence stirs up the gas, giving rise to a universal web-like structure in the interstellar medium, then gravity takes over and controls the further fragmentation of filaments into prestellar cores and ultimately protostars. This scenario provides new insight into the inefficiency of star formation, the origin of stellar masses, and the global rate of star formation in galaxies. Despite an apparent complexity, global star formation may be governed by relatively simple universal laws from filament to galactic scales.

18 pages, 8 figures, Invited Discourse at the IAU XXVIII General Assembly (Beijing, Aug. 2012), to appear in Highlights of Astronomy, Vol. 16

References in corpus (14)

• Cold Dark Clouds: The Initial Conditions for Star Formation
• Herschel view of the Taurus B211/3 filament and striations: Evidence of filamentary growth?
• Analytical theory for the initial mass function: CO clumps and prestellar cores
• Filamentary structure of star-forming complexes
• The Mass Distribution and Lifetime of Prestellar Cores in Perseus, Serpens, and Ophiuchus
• Identifying the Low Luminosity Population of Embedded Protostars in the c2d Observations of Clouds and Cores
• What determines the density structure of molecular clouds ? A case study of Orion B with Herschel
• The spine of the swan: A Herschel study of the DR21 ridge and filaments in Cygnus X
• Magnetically Aligned Velocity Anisotropy in the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• The Spitzer Gould Belt Survey of Large Nearby Interstellar Clouds: Discovery of a Dense Embedded Cluster in the Serpens-Aquila Rift
• Herschel observations of B1-bS and B1-bN: two first hydrostatic core candidates in the Perseus star-forming cloud
• Interferometric Identification of a Pre-Brown Dwarf
• The relationship between the prestellar core mass function and the stellar initial mass function
• Is the Taurus B213 Region a True Filament?: Observations of Multiple Cyanoacetylene Transitions

Cited by in corpus (11)

• IN-SYNC IV - The Young Stellar Population in the Orion A Molecular Cloud
• The JCMT BISTRO Survey: The Magnetic Field of the Barnard 1 Star-Forming Region
• Study of morphology and stellar content of the Galactic HII region IRAS 16148-5011
• A Gaia view of the two OB associations Cygnus OB2 and Carina OB1: The signature of their formation process
• Star formation in the filament of S254-S258 OB complex: a cluster in the process of making
• Structural and Dynamical Analysis of 0.1pc Cores and Filaments in the 30~Doradus-10 Giant Molecular Cloud
• Determining Star Formation Thresholds from Observations
• G.A.S. I: A prescription for turbulence-regulated star formation and its impact on galaxy properties
• Distortion of Magnetic Fields in a Starless Core VI: Application of Flux Freezing Model and Core Formation of FeSt 1-457
• Structure and Kinematics of Sh2-138 -- A distant hub-filament system in the outer Galactic plane
• A Gaia view on the star formation in the Monoceros OB1 and R1 associations