Publications

The paper was published in Nature and discusses how the Radcliffe Wave is moving. Using 3D velocities of young stellar clusters along the Wave it is shown that the most massive star-forming regions spatially associated with the Radcliffe Wave (including Orion, Cepheus, North America, and Cygnus X) move as if they are part of an oscillating traveling wave driven by the gravitational acceleration of the Galactic potential.

The first publication (the discovery paper) was published in Nature and discusses the 3D arrangement of local stellar nurseries into a 9000-light-year-long undulating filament. This discovery is based on two preceding papers related to the creation of a new catalog of accurate distances to local stellar nurseries -- work which enabled us to map their 3D spatial positions for the first time. The catalog paper summarizes the distance results, while the methods paper describes how the catalog was produced. Want to learn more about distance methods in astronomy, and how 3D dust mapping is ushering in a new era of distance determination? See the History page.