The New Frontier: Galactic-Scale Star Formation

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress and ongoing challenges in understanding star formation across different galactic scales, emphasizing new observational capabilities and the expanding parameter space explored.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of advancements and remaining challenges in galactic-scale star formation research, highlighting the shift to fainter galaxies and sub-galactic regions.

Findings

Progress in probing faint galaxies and sub-galactic regions.

Expansion of parameter space in star formation studies.

Identification of key remaining challenges in the field.

Abstract

The arena of investigation of star formation and its scaling laws is slowly, but consistently, shifting from the realm of luminous galaxies to that of faint ones and to sub--galactic regions, as existing and new facilities enable investigators to probe regions of the combined parameter space of surface brightness, wavelength, and angular resolution that were inaccessible until a few years ago. We summarize what has been accomplished, and what remain as challenges in the field of galactic--scale star formation.