The Labyrinth of Star Formation

This volume contains the proceedings from the conference "The Labyrinth of Star Formation" that was held in Crete, Greece, in June 2012, to honour the contributions to the study of star formation made by Professor Anthony Whitworth of Cardiff University.

The book covers many aspects of theoretical and observational star formation: low-mass star formation; young circumstellar discs; computational methods; triggered star formation; the stellar initial mass function; high-mass star formation and stellar clusters. Each section starts with a review paper, followed by papers discussing recent theoretical and observational work.

This volume summarises our current understanding of star formation and is useful for both graduate students and researchers alike.

Session I: Review of Prof. Whitworth's Work.- Session II: Low-Mass Star Formation.- Session III: Young Circumstellar Discs.- Session IV: Computational Star Formation: Models, Techniques, & Predictions.- Session V: Triggered Star Formation.- Session VI: Probing the Initial Stages of Star Formation.- Session VII: The Stellar Initial Mass Function.- Session VIII: High-Mass Star Formation.- Session IX: Clustered Star Formation.- Session X: Conference Photographs.

Dimitris Stamatellos is Research Associate at Cardiff University, UK. His research interests include star and planet formation, brown dwarf and planet formation from disc fragmentation, computational radiative transfer, smoothed particle hydrodynamics, and radiative transfer in hydrodynamic simulations, to name a few.

Simon Goodwin is Lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, UK. His research interests include hydrodynamic simulations of star formation, the formation of very-low mass stars and brown dwarfs, the formation and evolution of multiple star systems and the formation and early evolution of star clusters.

Derek Ward-Thompson is Director of the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute of Maths, Physics and Astronomy at the University of Central Lancashire and President of the UK Society of Popular Science.