2022

Did Supernovae Help Form Barnard's Loop? (Center for Astrophysics)

Did Supernovae Help Form Barnard's Loop? (Center for Astrophysics)

June 16, 2022

Astronomers studying the structure of the Milky Way galaxy have released the highest-resolution 3D view of the Orion star-forming region. "It seems clear that we are going to see a 'swiss cheese' picture of the interstellar medium, with stars forming at the edge of the holes, as we map more and more of the galaxy," says Dr. Alyssa Goodman, Harvard professor, CfA astronomer and co-author on the study.

Use of the open-source glue software, and web versions of it, are currently making...

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A New Map of the Sun’s Local Bubble (New York Times)

A New Map of the Sun’s Local Bubble (New York Times)

January 20, 2022

At the edge of a vast region devoid of gas and dust, scientists find an explanation for “how all nearby star formation began." Researchers previously lacked the tools to map gas and dust clouds in three dimensions. “Thanks to 3-D dust-mapping, now we do,” Dr. Alyssa Goodman said.

Robert Overbye of the New York Times delves into the story of the discovery and research behind the Local Bubble....

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A Star-Producing, Cosmic Bubble Shrouds Our Solar System (Smithsonian Magazine)

A Star-Producing, Cosmic Bubble Shrouds Our Solar System (Smithsonian Magazine)

January 14, 2022

For the first time, researchers have studied a series of events beginning 14 million years ago that caused a still-expanding cosmic bubble to envelop Earth's galactic neighborhood, forming all the nearby stars. Elizabeth Gamillo of Smithsonian Magazine reports on the discovery of the Local Bubble with the insights of Dr. Alyssa Goodman and collaborators....

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How a bubble gives birth to young stars (Harvard Gazette)

How a bubble gives birth to young stars (Harvard Gazette)

January 12, 2022

The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars — but how did those stars form?

Nadia Whitehead of the Harvard Gazette interviews Dr. Alyssa Goodman about the Local Bubble and the software that made the research possible. “We can piece together the history of star formation around us using a wide variety of independent clues: supernova models, stellar motions and exquisite new 3D maps of the material surrounding the Local Bubble.”...

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Earth Is Surrounded by 1,000-Light-Year Wide Bubble – Source of All Nearby, Young Stars (SciTech Daily)

Earth Is Surrounded by 1,000-Light-Year Wide Bubble – Source of All Nearby, Young Stars (SciTech Daily)

January 12, 2022

SciTech Daily covers the Local Bubble and how the expansion speed of the bubble, as well as the past and present trajectories of the young stars forming on its surface, were derived using data obtained by Gaia, a space-based observatory launched by the European Space Agency. 

“This is an incredible detective story, driven by both data and theory,” says Harvard professor and Center for Astrophysics astronomer Dr. Alyssa Goodman, a study co-author and founder of ...

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Galactic Visualization Revelations, at Nörrkoping, Sweden (Remote), Friday, June 3, 2022:
sweden.pdf

A presentation given remotely at the Astrovisualization Symposium held by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Nörrkoping, Sweden. The talk covers how 3D dust mapping, and complementary techniques, are revealing a wealth of previously-unknown structures and phenomena associated with the “New” Milky Way.  The features observed are literally “new,” in that they are caused by relatively short-timescale phenomena such as feedback from star formation, interactions of massive extragalactic objects with the Milky Way, and other as-yet unidentified phenomena. The specific results I present include: discoveries of The Radcliffe Wave and the Perseus-Taurus Superbubble; 1-pc-resolution 3D maps of individual molecular clouds;  unraveling the origins of Barnard’s Loop in Orion; and the “Star Formation Frontier” at the surface of The Local Bubble.

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A Peek at How We See the Universe with Glue, at Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, Tuesday, June 28, 2022:
reu_vis_2022.pdf

A presentation for students of the REU program at Harvard about the state of partnerships between astronomical, physical, and computational approaches to gleaning insight from combinations of scientific and information visualization in Astrophysics. In particular, I discuss how the “glue” linked-view visualization environment (glueviz.org), developed originally to facilitate high-dimensional data exploration in Astronomy and Medicine, can be extended to many other fields of data-driven inquiry. Other topics include current open-source, plug & play, approach to software facilitates the combination of powerful programs and projects such as glue, WorldWide Telescope, ESASky, and the Zooniverse Citizen Science platform.

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The Local Milky Way, in 3D, at Institut Pascal, Paris, France, Wednesday, July 20, 2022:
the-locai-milky-way-in-3d.pdf

A talk at the 2022 Interstellar Institue on why 2D <--> 3D transformations, and paying attention to the dimensionality of data and display modes for it is so important in understanding the nature of the local interstellar medium. Plus, a sneak preview of the magnetic field of the Local Bubble, by way of an example of these visualization concepts. 

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