Figure 1 from the paper 'Requiem for a belt'. Top-down view of the 800 pc (about 2,610 light-years) region around the Sun (yellow star). Left panel: density of young massive stars (blue) and dust (red), with the Radcliffe Wave and Split shaded, and the old Gould’s Belt model as orange ellipse. Right panel: young star clusters colored by family, with their future trajectories. Credit: Pantaleoni González et al. 2026 (arXiv:2604.13225)
🧵1/5
For 170 years we thought there was a large inclined ring of young stars around the Sun.🔭
A new study using Gaia data shows instead that it doesn’t exist: Gould’s Belt is just a temporary alignment of a few star clusters.🧪⚛️
No ring, just a 3D asterism.
arxiv.org/abs/2604.13225
#galactic
