Towards a Global Understanding of High and Low Mass Star Formation

在过去的30年里，我们在星星形成领域的很大一部分进展都集中在低质量恒星（质量小于等于1个太阳的恒星）的形成上，因为这些物体就在附近，并且被认为是与其他恒星隔离形成的。然而，现在人们认识到，大多数恒星（约90%）是在星团中形成的，而不是孤立的。此外，赫歇尔空间天文台的观测已经确定了一个遍布星际介质的复杂纤维网。这些细丝分裂成致密的团块，其中一些从湍流到相干的相变，然后成为恒星的形成场所。这些丝状体是如何形成、分裂并随后演化成星团的，目前还不清楚。因此，很明显，低质量星星形成的细节并不像以前认为的那样被很好地理解。

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.