{"id":22519,"date":"2020-01-08T11:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/?p=22519"},"modified":"2020-01-08T11:12:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T16:12:46","slug":"giant-wave-like-collection-of-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/news\/giant-wave-like-collection-of-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Milky Way&#8217;s giant, wave-like collection of gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"22536\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/news\/giant-wave-like-collection-of-gas\/attachment\/radwave_010820_sm\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,338\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"radwave_010820_sm\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-22536 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm-300x113.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820_sm-768x288.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<table class=\" aligncenter\" style=\"width: 73%; border-collapse: collapse; background-color: #f0f0f0;\" cellpadding=\"10px\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<em>Astronomers at Harvard University have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure - the largest ever seen in our galaxy - made up of interconnected stellar nurseries. Dubbed the \u201cRadcliffe Wave\u201d in honor of the collaboration\u2019s home base, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the discovery transforms a 150-year-old vision of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one featuring an undulating, star-forming filament that reaches trillions of miles above and below the galactic disk.<\/em><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<em>The work, published in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-019-1874-z\">Nature<\/a>, was enabled by a new analysis of data from the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013 with the mission of precisely measuring the position, distance, and motion of the stars. The research team\u2019s innovative approach combined the super-accurate data from Gaia with other measurements to construct a detailed, 3D map of interstellar matter in the Milky Way, and noticed an unexpected pattern in the spiral arm closest to Earth.<\/em><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/01\/largest-gaseous-structure-ever-seen-in-our-galaxy-is-discovered\/\">Read More at the Harvard Gazette<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<ul>\n<li>Interconnected stellar nurseries form the largest gaseous structure ever observed in the Milky Way galaxy <a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/01\/largest-gaseous-structure-ever-seen-in-our-galaxy-is-discovered\/\"><em>Harvard Gazette<\/em>, Jan 7, 2020<\/a><\/li>\n<li>A Galactic-scale gas wave in the solar neighborhood - <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-019-1874-z\"><em>Nature<\/em>, Jan 7, 2020<\/a>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>A Large Catalog of Accurate Distances to Local Molecular Clouds: The Gaia DR2 Edition - <em><a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/ab2388\">The Astrophysical Journal<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">Astronomers at Harvard University have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure - the largest ever seen in our galaxy - made up of interconnected stellar nurseries. Dubbed the \u201cRadcliffe Wave\u201d in honor of the collaboration\u2019s home base, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the discovery transforms a 150-year-old vision of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one featuring&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"btn btn-primary\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/news\/giant-wave-like-collection-of-gas\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":22529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YvN-5Rd","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/radwave_010820.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22519"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22538,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22519\/revisions\/22538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rc.fas.harvard.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}