Studying Stellar Nurseries in the Near Part of the Milky Way

半个世纪前，科学家们并不认为恒星在宇宙中不断形成。我们现在知道宇宙由数十亿个星系组成，其中许多星系都有星星形成的区域。在银河系中，我们可以以前所未有的细节研究这一过程。根据目前的理论，恒星形成于湍流和静止的星际气体和尘埃云中。不过，具体情况还不得而知。一代恒星究竟如何导致下一代恒星，还有待于通过观测和理论相结合来确定。该项目的重点是详细绘制恒星形成的相对较近区域的结构。这将使我们能够在空间上将相干的恒星群与星际介质特征的复杂网络相关联，从而进一步研究它们的相互作用。该项目已被专门选择向学生介绍科学调查的性质。绘制银河系地图和研究恒星是如何诞生的是学生们觉得有趣和容易理解的想法。 这个项目的一小部分可以作为独立的研究任务，这为具有不同技能，能力和偏好的本科生创造了一个包容性的学习环境。这第一次接触研究打开了大门，更丰富的研究经验，并可能导致在科学和工程相关领域的职业生涯。这一建议的目的是重新评估的结构和恒星形成的历史，主要银河系恒星形成领域。精确的光度测量将被用来将年轻大质量恒星的空间分布与星际物质的周围结构联系起来。随后的恒星形成历史分析试图对仍然有争议的问题得出具体的结论，例如星星形成层次（集群或触发星星形成）和恒星形成复合体中的多个恒星世代。解释银河系盘内的恒星形成情景总是有问题的，因为有许多示踪物体的选择，不同的观测方法，以及关于观测数据的数量，质量和完整性的问题。为了克服这一点，新的和现有的数据将结合起来，以产生一个银河系年轻的集群，OB协会，和早期型场星的光度计的星表可以计算。该星表将是均匀距离和颜色过度的一个很好的来源，因此是研究5-6 kpc银河系螺旋结构的可靠起点。该项目被选中不仅是因为它对天文学领域的贡献，而且还因为它对教师和学生的可行性，主要是本科院校。

Half a century ago, scientists did not think that stars were continually forming in the Universe. We now know that the Universe consists of billions of galaxies, and many of them harbor regions of star formation. In the Milky Way galaxy we can study this process in unprecedented detail. According to the current theories, stars form in both turbulent and quiescent clouds of interstellar gas and dust. However, the details are still unknown. How exactly one generation of stars leads to the next remains to be determined through a combination of observation and theory. This project is focused on a detailed mapping of the structure of relatively nearby regions where stars form. This will allow us to spatially correlate the coherent groups of stars to the complex net of interstellar medium features and, therefore, further study their interactions. The project has been chosen specifically to introduce students to the nature of scientific investigation. Mapping the Milky Way and investigating how stars are born are ideas that students find interesting and accessible. Small parts of this project can be isolated as independent research tasks, which creates an inclusive learning environment for undergraduate students with different skills, aptitudes, and preferences. This first encounter with research opens the door to richer research experiences and could lead toward careers in science- and engineering-related fields.The objective of this proposal is to reassess the structure and star-formation history of the major Galactic star-forming fields. Precise photometric parallaxes will be employed to correlate the spatial distribution of young massive stars to the surrounding structures of interstellar matter. The subsequent star-formation history analysis seeks to reach specific conclusions on still controversial issues, such as star formation hierarchy (clustered or triggered star formation) and multiple stellar generations across star-forming complexes. Interpreting the star-formation scenario within the Galactic disk is always problematic because of the many choices of tracer objects, varied observational approaches, and issues regarding the quantity, quality, and completeness of the observational data. To overcome this, new and existing data will be combined to produce a catalog of Galactic young clusters, OB-associations, and early-type field stars for which photometric parallaxes can be calculated. The catalog will be an excellent source of homogeneous distances and color excesses, and thus a reliable starting point in the study of the Galactic spiral structure to 5-6 kpc. The project is chosen not only for its contribution to the field of astronomy, but also because of its feasibility for faculty and students in a primarily undergraduate institution.