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Selections from 2025: The Formation of Massive Stars

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star-forming region AFGL 5180
Hubble Space Telescope image of the star-forming region AFGL 5180, which is one of the regions studied in the SOFIA Massive Star Formation Survey. [ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. C. Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), R. Fedriani (Chalmers University); Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt; CC BY 4.0]

Editor’s Note: For the remainder of 2025, we’ll be looking at a few selections that we haven’t yet discussed on AAS Nova from among the most-downloaded articles published in AAS journals this year. The usual posting schedule will resume January 2nd.

The SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey. V. Clustered Protostars

Published June 2025

Main takeaway:

A team led by Zoie Telkamp (University of Virginia) used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, to study massive protostars and test theories of high-mass star formation. Contrary to the predictions of some star-formation models, the team found no evidence that massive protostars require a certain surface mass density to form. Formation in a cluster environment, however, may limit the formation of the most massive protostars.

Why it’s interesting:

Massive stars are rare, short-lived, and luminous. They influence their environments across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales, from advancing the epoch of reionization in the early universe to impacting the formation of individual planetary systems in the present-day universe. The fundamental question of how high-mass stars form is still unsettled. Theories of high-mass star formation range from scaled-up versions of low-mass star formation to scenarios involving collisions between protostars.

More about this massive-star study and the potential impact of a cluster environment:

infrared images of massive protostars

SOFIA FORCAST and Herschel Space Observatory images of protostars in the G18.67+0.03 star-forming region. Click to enlarge. [Telkamp et al. 2025]

Researchers developed the SOFIA Massive Star Formation Survey to investigate the origins of massive stars, targeting roughly 50 high-mass and intermediate-mass protostars in a wide variety of environments in our galaxy. This particular work, the fifth in a series of articles reporting the survey’s findings, described the team’s study of massive protostars forming in cluster environments. Using the Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), Telkamp and collaborators identified 34 protostars in seven star-forming regions and estimated their masses and other physical properties. The team noted a lack of protostars above 30 solar masses in these cluster regions, which might be evidence that competition for gas in dense environments can prevent the formation of more massive protostars. More work is needed to confirm this finding.

Citation

Zoie Telkamp et al 2025 ApJ 986 15. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/adcd79