New Evidence for the Formation of Barnard's Loop

Michael Foley

Wednesday December 2nd, 15:15

Recent kinematic studies of both gas and stars around the Orion region suggest that a major feedback event occurred there roughly 6 Myr ago. We present new work investigating kinematic clustering of stars, Al-26 modeling, and simulations that suggest such a feedback event was the origin of Barnard's Loop, a famous arc of H-alpha emission in the region. State-of-the-art dust mapping is also used to constrain distances to the whole Orion-Eridanus region and visualize the environment of this event in 3D. Finally, we discuss how such techniques are being applied to other regions in the solar neighborhood to compile a catalog of other potential feedback events for future study.