Star formation in cooling flows

A cooling flow can deposit large quantities of gas around the central galaxy in a cluster. These are then the largest nearby regions of star formation if the gas forms into stars. The process also operates is most elliptical galaxies at a much reduced rate. Optical magnitudes and spectra of central cluster galaxies show that only a small fraction of the gas is converted into ''normal'' stars. Most of it presumably forms low-mass stars. The evidence for star formation from cooling flows, both near and distant, is discussed