The Enigma of Star Formation at High Galactic Latitudes
  Molecular clouds at very high latitudes ($b > 60^o$) away from the Galactic
plane are considered rare and not conventional sites of star formation.
Contrary to this, the recent discovery of high latitude embedded Clusters can
possibly change our understanding of the Galaxy formation, evolution and
dynamics and the role of the halo in the Galactic evolutionary process. This
article reviews a study of nine embedded clusters (ECs) reported in recent
literature with ages less than 5 Myr and vertical distances from the galactic
disc ranging from 1.8 to 5 kpc. It discusses the processes that could cause
star formation within low density and extraplanar environments in the halo and
discuss the possible origins of these clusters. Are these episodic events or is
star cluster formation a systematic phenomenon in the Galactic halo? Two of
these objects will be observed by us with Astrosat, so we shall comment on the
possible results we expect to get with Astrostat UV and Xray data.
