I think it’s cool that some people focus on curing disease and some people focus on understanding what animals are up to and some people think about our place in the universe and how things came to be the way they are. People are driven by curiosity and I promise you you don’t want it any other way
they just wanna know where they come from
really cool work Alexis!!
A new census of OB associations with Gaia!
In this study, we took advantage of my OB stars map to find new OB associations within 1 kpc. The goal was to create a useful reference catalogue for this era, and to trace the star formation and structure of the local Milky Way.
#stellarastro #galactic
Their input source selection in the Sco-Cen region, showing stars with (blue) and without (orange) disks.
The fraction of young stars with disks as a function of age, based on three different selection methods. All show that many stars appear to have disks to ages well beyond ~10 million years, with a median lifetime of ~5 million years!
New paper led by Fabian Polnitzcky & with @sratzenboeck.bsky.social + @joaoalves.bsky.social: based on the ages of stars with infrared excess in Sco-Cen, it seems planet-forming disks last around twice as long as previous estimates suggest - giving twice as long for planets to form. 🔭☄️ #exoplanets
Simulating accurate observations of star clusters is really annoying! So as a part of this paper, we open sourced all of the code we used to simulate them, and there's a Python notebook that explains how to do it right here: 🔭☄️ #galactic #astrocode
A great paper led by Josefa Großschedl has a appeared on arxiv this morning!
A detailed study on the velocity dispersion of the subgroups of Sco-Cen, the nearest OB association. The expansion of the complex is driven by stellar feedback, engendering a sequential star formation process.
#astronomy
but those we can find are worth looking for ☝️🙂↕️
Figure 16: Sky projections, in Galactic coordinates, showing various properties of the Gaia DR3 data release (see text for details).
Gargantuan Gaia review by Michael Perryman
"271 pages, 126 figures, accepted for publication in Physics Reports"
arxiv.org/abs/2509.10883
Just about a month until we kick off "Stellar Origins" in Vienna! 👀 Until then, we'll keep you updated here with news on the scientific program and some sneak peeks of what else we have planned for you! Stay tuned and tell your friends! #stellarorigins2025
weaponized avoidance
prioritätenliste machen die man dann trotzdem net einhält >>>>
An exciting paper has appeared today, led by Lily Kormann from the University of Vienna! With the extinction map from Edenhofer et al. (2024), they discovered seven local superclouds, only two of which, The Radcliffe Wave and The Split, were already known!
#galactic
arxiv.org/abs/2507.14883
🎉🎉🎉🎉
The fraction of simulated clusters we recover (upper panel) compared against a dust map (lower panel.) Dust is clearly a major hindrance to seeing open clusters with Gaia.
The detectability of young clusters (upper panel) and old clusters (lower panel) in the anticentre of our galaxy. Grey points show real clusters. It's clear that there's a huge void where we're not sensitive enough to say if there are more old clusters.
The detectability of old clusters, shown a different way. The two most distant catalogued clusters in the anticentre (Saurer 1 & Berkeley 29) appear to simply be lucky detections, as they sit in a small (not so reddened) part of the anticentre.
General trends in cluster detectability in the region as a function of various parameters. Mass, age, extinction, and distance are the biggest culprits.
How many open clusters could be hiding at the edge of our galaxy? 🔭☄️🧪 #galactic
Our new paper out today (A&A, accepted) pioneers a new way to test the completeness of cluster catalogues built with @esa.int's Gaia mission!
favorite part of the day when the badgers come out and make noise outside of my window and I get to watch them snack on raspberries
🫥👎
also would love to get diagnosed with a cluster 🤲
Backwards orbital integration of star clusters near the Sun in their work. Notice how all the grey dots originate in three areas. (Their Fig. 1)
An interesting #galactic paper by Cameren Swiggum (@mac0598.bsky.social) et al. came out today! ☄️🧪
Extending previous work that showed most young star clusters near to the Sun came from just three regions, Cameren shows that actually *all* nearby clusters come from just three regions!
Cool paper out by Juan D. Soler et al! They looked at the line-of-sight motion of the ISM based on 3D dust maps, HI and CO line emission, creating several maps of how the dust and gas in our solar neighborhood move! 🔭🧪
www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...
I'm not sure I'm emotionally prepared to say goodbye to Gaia. This video, shared by @esa.int, is the spacecraft fading from view for the final time. It's still alive, but will be switched off on Thursday. 🔭 www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NGh...
not to be italian on main but if lewis turns that pole into a win i'll revert to catholicism
happy ides of march to those who celebrate
New result from MPIA: Two of our astronomers have taken a look at just how "dirty" our window into deep space is, concretely: they have mapped the properties of dust out there in the Milky Way, including how that dust absorbs light. www.mpia.de/news/science...
this part
never underestimate what a little spring hike in the mountains can do for your mental sanity!
Interesting paper out today by Efrem Maconi, @joaoalves.bsky.social et al.! They find that the Sun probably passed through a massive wave of interstellar dust and gas (the Radcliffe wave) around 11 to 18 million years ago. 🔭🧪 #milkyway #planetsci arxiv.org/abs/2502.16360
as much as I like to complain about austrian trains they popped off with the nightjets
trans icon 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️