Physical Processes in Interstellar Clouds

This book is the result of a meeting held in August, 1986 in Irsee, West Germany. As the title suggests, the aim of the meeting was to discuss physical processes in interstellar clouds, determine the current status, aims and future direction of the research in this area. Interstellar clouds contain nearly all the mass of diffuse gas in our galaxy, some 10% of the total galactic mass. They represent the birth site for stars and the final dumping ground for matter ejected from stars (winds, ex­ plosive ejecta) and thus play an integral part in the galactic recycling of material. Not only are the clouds important for the structure and evolution of our galaxy, they are also interesting objects of study per se. Because of their vast scales (up to about 100 parsec), extreme temperatures (as low as about lOOK), and long life 8 times (estimated a about 10 years) a number of physical and chemical processes occur in these environments, which we are not able to study elesewhere, certainly not in laboratories. It is for this reason that the meeting, and hence this book, was organized in such a way that firstly the latest observational results were sum­ m~ized, going from the global, large scales, to finer details and dynamics, then progressing onwards to the processes -dynamical, chemical, electromagnetic, etc.