37 research outputs found
Prospects for Studies of Stellar Evolution and Stellar Death in the JWST Era
I review the prospects for studies of the advanced evolutionary stages of
low-, intermediate- and high-mass stars by the JWST and concurrent facilities,
with particular emphasis on how they may help elucidate the dominant
contributors to the interstellar dust component of galaxies. Observations
extending from the mid-infrared to the submillimeter can help quantify the
heavy element and dust species inputs to galaxies from AGB stars. JWST's MIRI
mid-infrared instrument will be so sensitive that observations of the dust
emission from individual intergalactic AGB stars and planetary nebulae in the
Virgo Cluster will be feasible. The Herschel Space Observatory will enable the
last largely unexplored spectral region, the far-IR to the submillimeter, to be
surveyed for new lines and dust features, while SOFIA will cover the wavelength
gap between JWST and Herschel, a spectral region containing important fine
structure lines, together with key water-ice and crystalline silicate bands.
Spitzer has significantly increased the number of Type II supernovae that have
been surveyed for early-epoch dust formation but reliable quantification of the
dust contributions from massive star supernovae of Type II, Type Ib and Type Ic
to low- and high-redshift galaxies should come from JWST MIRI observations,
which will be able to probe a volume over 1000 times larger than Spitzer.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figures. To appear in `Astrophysics in the Next Decade:
JWST and Concurrent Facilities' (JWST Conference Proceedings), edited by H.
A. Thronson, M. Stiavelli and A. G. G. M. Tielens; Springer Series:
Astrophysics and Space Science Proceeding
The discovery of deep-water seagrass meadows in a pristine Indian Ocean wilderness revealed by tracking green turtles
Star clusters near and far; tracing star formation across cosmic time
© 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00690-x.Star clusters are fundamental units of stellar feedback and unique tracers of their host galactic properties. In this review, we will first focus on their constituents, i.e.\ detailed insight into their stellar populations and their surrounding ionised, warm, neutral, and molecular gas. We, then, move beyond the Local Group to review star cluster populations at various evolutionary stages, and in diverse galactic environmental conditions accessible in the local Universe. At high redshift, where conditions for cluster formation and evolution are more extreme, we are only able to observe the integrated light of a handful of objects that we believe will become globular clusters. We therefore discuss how numerical and analytical methods, informed by the observed properties of cluster populations in the local Universe, are used to develop sophisticated simulations potentially capable of disentangling the genetic map of galaxy formation and assembly that is carried by globular cluster populations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio