Astro Seminar
Massive Star Wars: The earliest stages of high-mass star formation
Speaker: Andy Rigby (Leeds)
Date: Wednesday 9 April 2025
Time: 14:00
Venue: N3.28
Despite making up less than 1% of any given population of newly-formed stars, massive stars (with masses > 8 Msun) have an outsized influence on the evolution of galaxies due to their photo ionising radiation, powerful stellar winds, and supernova explosions. Understanding their formation is of paramount importance for understanding the evolution of galaxies and, therefore, the universe as a whole. The last decade or so has seen the establishment of a filamentary paradigm for the formation of stars with masses up to ~5 Msun, in which dense cores formed via the gravitational fragmentation of thermally supercritical filaments appear to define the reservoir from which such stars form. However, how massive stars are assembled within molecular clouds remains a controversial topic, with competing theories disagreeing about the scale of the mass reservoir from which they accrete material. A growing body of evidence suggests that 'hub-filament systems' may play a key role, though it is yet to be established whether these are special cases, or are indeed indicative of a universal formation mechanism for high-mass stars. In this talk, I will give an overview of recent observational studies that aim to tackle the question of how material makes its way from the ~100pc scales of molecular clouds, down to the ~1000 AU scales of dense cores.