Mapping the Milky Way Near and Far - Josh Speagle
Channel: CANVAS Talk Series
Date: 2022-04-29

Exploring how galaxies like the Milky Way evolve requires knowledge of not only the building blocks that make up our own Galaxy but also the processes by which galaxies evolve over cosmic time. But first we need to know what our own galaxy looks like! I will discuss some of the challenges involved with trying to uncover Galactic structure as well as some of the efforts led by me and my collaborators to overcome these in order to derive 3-D maps of gas, dust, and stars. I will then highlight some cool (re-)discoveries, along with accompanying data visualization efforts, that these results have led to both in the Solar neighborhood and at large distances. I will close with some discussion about some of the exciting future opportunities in uncovering Galactic structure.