The Local Bubble around the Sun

This artist illustration shows the Local Bubble surrounding the Sun. This is a relatively empty patch of space with less dust and gas than typical for other surrounding regions. This peanut-shaped ‘bubble’ moves together with the Sun on its orbit around the Milky Way centre.

Using data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists discovered that around 14 million years ago a series of supernovae pushed out the interstellar gas to create the bubble, triggering star formation on its surface. All young stars and star-forming regions out to about 500 light-years from the Sun sit on this bubble. The Local Bubble spreads out a thousand light-years and keeps growing. Scientists believe that the series of explosive events created the perfect conditions that lead to star-formation taking place in the solar neighbourhood.