This book is based on a series of lectures given by the author in his graduate class on star formation, taught from 2009 - 2014 at UC Santa Cruz. It is intended for graduate students or advanced undergraduates in astronomy or physics, but does not presume detailed knowledge of particular areas of astrophysics (e.g., the interstellar medium or galactic structure). It is intended to provide a general overview of the field of star formation, at a level that would enable a student to begin independent research in the area.

This course covers the basics of star formation and ending at the transition to planet formation. The structure of the course / book is as follows. Each chapter corresponds roughly to a single lecture. The first two chapters begin with a discussion of observational techniques, and the basic phenomenology they reveal. The goal is to familiarize students with the basic techniques that will be used throughout, and to provide a common vocabulary for the rest of the course. The next five chapters provide a similar review of the basic physical processes that are important for star formation. Again, the goal is to provide a basis for what follows. The remaining chapters discuss star formation over a variety of scales, starting with the galactic scale and working our way down to the scales of individual stars and their disks. The course concludes with the clearing of disks and the transition to planet formation.