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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
The existence of material in the immediate vicinity of young main sequence stars or even younger objects, protostars, still contracting and evolving towards the main sequence, is related closely to the details of star formation. Although a number of individual idealized problems related to star formation have been well studied, our overall understanding of how interstellar matter evolves into full fledged hydrogen-burning stars can be deemed qualitative at best. The emerging picture is neither complete nor should it be considered the final answer as to how stars form. Let us summarize this picture by a list of “axioms”, valid for star formation (SF) in the plane of our Galaxy.