Eloisa Poggio and Ronald Drimmel
An international team of researchers, including several from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and led by Eloisa Poggio and Ronald Drimmel (Turin Astrophysical Observatory – OATo) has compiled the most detailed map yet of the Milky Way’s spiral structure within about 16,000 light years from the Sun, by making use of the position and brightness of around 600,000 young stars measured by Gaia, the European Space Agency’s star surveyor.

Articles:

La nuova mappa del nostro vicinato cosmico

The new map of our cosmic neighborhood obtained thanks to data from the Gaia satellite: the areas in red show the regions richer in stars compared to the average density, and the areas in blue show the regions poorer in stars. Credits: Poggio et al. 2021