Summary

The central objective of this project is the theoretical and observational study of starbursts, and their impact on the galaxies hosting them. Our aim is to define the extent of these bursts as well as the key parameters that allow their feeding, leading to the birth of future generation of stars. To this end a carefully selected sample of starburst galaxies has been chosen covering a wide range of properties, from nearby spiral galaxies hosting nuclear starbursts, through those in dwarf galaxies, Giant HII regions in spiral and irregular galaxies, and including galaxies hosting active nuclei.

In what follows we present the Coordinated Project ESTALLIDOS (AYA2007-67965-C03) funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación ministry, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA), theUniversidad Autónoma de Madrid (UCM), the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB-CSIC-INTA), theCIEMAT and the XMM-Newton Observatory of the European Space Agency participate.

This project is the continuation of another project currently running, and approved two years ago (AYA2004_08260_C03), which in turn was the continuation of the original ESTALLIDOS (AYA2001-3939-C03), and has been joined by new members and research centers with complementary experience.

In this third edition of the ESTALLIDOS project, we add to new objectives to the original one of studying massive star formation: 

  1. as a team we will prepare and carry out competitive key programs in order to achieve enough observing time in present and future large scale international facilities (e.g. VLT, GTC or GTM); and

  2. at the same time we will strengthen our activity in public outreach and diffusion of science news via the design of an efficient scheme to disseminate the results of the project, in coordination with the efforts of our respective institutions. With these two new objectives we could put in practical terms our participation in the Consolider-Ingenio2010: Ciencia con el GT project:
    for which ESTALLIDOS constitutes a central component.