The Milky Way Lab’s 3D CMZ project is now published and making a splash!
The four papers:
- Battersby et al. 2025a: 3D CMZ. I. Central Molecular Zone Overview
- Battersby et al. 2025b: 3D CMZ. II. Hierarchical Structure Analysis of the Central Molecular Zone
- Walker et al. 2025: 3D CMZ. III. Constraining the 3D Structure of the Central Molecular Zone via Molecular Line Emission and Absorption
- Lipman et al. 2025: 3D CMZ. IV. Distinguishing Near versus Far Distances in the Galactic Center Using Spitzer and Herschel
are all accepted to the Astrophysical Journal and are publicly available. In this paper series, we make the best measurements to date of how our extreme Galactic Center would appear from the top down. We start by measuring the column density of gas in the entire inner 40 degrees of the Galaxy, defining the extent of the CMZ, identifing a full hierarchy of cloud structures, and then selecting individual kinematically coherent molecular clouds in the region. We use a variety of techniques from infrared to radio to measure the likelihood that each cloud is in front or behind the Galactic Center. We then combine these likelihoods to compare with existing 3D models of our CMZ and add in our own best model for the CMZ.
You can read more in this UConn Today article Charting Our Galaxy’s Extreme Center also covered on phys.org Developing a clearer 3D model of the galactic center.
Follow along with this continuing project on our dedicated 3D CMZ website which contains links to all four papers, all our data, all our code, and a cool 3D viewer you can use to play with the data yourself! You can also check out our WorldWide Telescope Tour on this project.
We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation under Award Nos. 1816715, 2108938, 2206510, and CAREER 2145689.