Towards a Global Understanding of High and Low Mass Star Formation

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A large part of our progress in the field of star formation over the past 30 years has focused solely on the formation of low-mass stars (stars with ~1 solar mass or less), because these objects are nearby and were thought to form isolated from other stars. However, it is now recognized that most stars (~ 90%) form in clusters instead of in isolation. Furthermore, observations from the Herschel Space Observatory have identified a complex web of filaments that pervade the Interstellar medium. These filaments break up into dense, compact clumps some of which make a phase transition from turbulence to coherence and then become the formation sites of stars. How these filaments form, fragment, and subsequently evolve into clusters of stars is still uncertain. As a result, it has become clear that the details of low mass star formation are not as well understood as it was previously believed.