Abstract

Until recently, much of our understanding of the 3D structure of our Milky Way was based on 2D observations of stars and dust, or spectral-line observations of gas. Distance measurements needed to turn the 2D sky into a 3D physical picture of the stars and interstellar clouds that form them were few and far between. In this talk, I will discuss how the rise of Gaia and large photometric surveys — in combination with new data science and visualization techniques — is quickly changing the landscape. In particular, I will show how 3D dust maps have received a huge distance resolution boost from Gaia and how 3D dust can be “knitted” together with velocity information from gas and young stars to render new 3D spatial-kinematic views of our solar neighborhood. On small scales, I will present a new analysis of the 3D spatial topologies of local molecular clouds, linking the formation of a subset of these clouds to the expansion of a previously undiscovered feedback-driven superbubble. And on large scales, I will show how many of these clouds are connected into a 2.7-kpc-long undulating gaseous structure called the Radcliffe Wave, which redefines our understanding of the Local Arm nearby.