====== Star formation ======

Many decades of intensive astronomical research has revealed a wealth of data on how stars form.

>Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space, sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions", collapse and form stars." \\ \\ Source  [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_formation|Wikipedia]]

Although the broad aspects of how this happens are now clear, the fine details are not. A 2018 paper in //Nature Astronomy // drew attention to one particular aspect - the relationship between the mass of star-forming clouds of dust and gas and the eventual mass of the star itself.

>Understanding the processes that determine the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a critical unsolved problem, with profound implications for many areas of astrophysics."\\ \\ Source :  [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0452-x|The unexpectedly large proportion of high-mass star-forming cores in a Galactic mini-starburst]] //Nature Astronomy//, volume 2, pages 478–482 (2018)

A series of new experiments are currently being conducted aboard the  [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_Infrared_Astronomy|Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)]] with the aim of revealing more details.

The  BBC's //'Sky at Night'// programme covered star formation (9th Dec. 2018) and described the German Space Agency's [[https://www.dlr.de/dlr//en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10002/|DLR]] 'German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies'[[https://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10212/332_read-3535/#/gallery/1312|(GREAT)]] which is looking at the extreme lower end of the infra-red spectrum to find clues.

>//Professor Chris Lintott (BBC)//  "We've known the basics for a long while, but the details are still very obscure. We don't understand them."\\ \\ //Karl Jacobs (DLR)// "That is absolutely right. So that is what we are looking for - and finding new things every day."\\ \\ [[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jfq|Source : Sky at Night, 9th Dec. 2018]]