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Astronomy Colloquium

Astronomy Colloquia at Caltech for 2021-22

Colloquia are held every Wednesday during the academic year at 4pm in the Cahill Hameetman auditorium. Wine and cheese will be served in the Cahill Foyer from 5:00-5:30pm (pending COVID restrictions).

NOTE: DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM WILL BE VIRTUAL.

Astronomy Colloquium Youtube channel


June 7, 2023 4:00 pm

ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM

A Cloud-Scale View of the Star Formation Process
Eva Schinnerer, Staff Scientist, MPIA, Heidelberg,

Star formation is the vital process for stellar mass growth during the evolution of galaxies.
Our understanding of where stars form and how their formation is regulated across galactic
disks is surprisingly incomplete. In order to resolve the sites of recent (or future) star formation and sample the time evolution of the star formation process, high spatial resolution observations of nearby galaxies are required that reach the scales of the star-forming units, namely Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) and HII regions. With the advent of major facilities such as ALMA, JWST, HST, and VLT/MUSE, it is now possible to probe the molecular gas reservoir, dust and embedded star formation, young stellar clusters and stellar feedback at comparable resolution.

I will introduce the PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) survey that is assembling a comprehensive database to study the matter cycle in galaxies and present our emerging picture of the star formation process from the collaboration research.

To view this talk via YouTube, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1880Rn0qkKFkWyROUq1kRlgCsuBTrnd