Efforts to unveil the structure of the local interstellar medium and its recent star-formation history have spanned the past 70 years (refs. ). Recent studies using precise data from space astrometry missions have revealed nearby, newly formed star clusters with connected origins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor the past 150 years, the prevailing view of the local interstellar medium has been based on a peculiarity known as the Gould Belt, an expanding ring of young stars, gas and dust, tilted about 20 degrees to the Galactic plane. However, the physical relationship between local gas clouds has remained unknown because the accuracy in distance measurements to such clouds is of the same order as, or larger than, their sizes. With the advent of large photometric surveys and the astrometric survey, this situation has changed.
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