Dissecting nearby galaxies with PHANGS: stellar structures, molecular gas, and star formation

by Dr Miguel Querejeta (IGN/OAN, Spain)

Wednesday 6 May 2026, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Nearby galaxies display a wealth of stellar structures and different modes of star formation. We have known for a long time that stars are born out of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), but we have only recently started to resolve individual GMCs in a representative sample of nearby galaxies. In this talk, I will summarise ongoing efforts from the PHANGS collaboration to characterise the cycle of star formation in nearby galaxies, combining observations from ALMA, MUSE, HST, and JWST. I will show how the distribution of molecular gas and star formation is regulated by stellar structures, including centres, bars, and spiral arms. I will specifically focus on spiral arms and show how they play an active role in reorganising gas and star formation, but not necessarily triggering it, and show how our observations compare with predictions from spiral density wave theory. I will also examine to what extent bars suppress star formation. All in all, our findings point to a large diversity in how these stellar structures organise and modulate star formation in the local universe.