Physical Society Colloquium

Star Formation Near and Far

Jonathan Tan

Department of Astronomy
University of Florida

Star formation is a fundamental process that, as the final stage of cosmic structure formation, dictates how galaxies form and evolve. At the same time it sets the environment for the birth of planetary systems. We must understand star formation to know our own origins. Unfortunately we are a long way from a complete theory of star formation. In this talk I describe a number of projects through which we attempt to understand how stars form in a range of galactic environments. We start with massive star and star cluster formation in our local Galactic neighborhood, exemplified by the Orion Nebula Cluster. We look for differences between star cluster formation in dwarf irregular and spiral galaxies. Continuing to the environs of supermassive black holes, we find star formation is a natural and important part of their accretion process. Finally we apply the knowledge we have gained about local star formation to make a theoretical prediction for how it occurs in the high redshift, metal-free universe.