Cameren Swiggum

I study how star formation unfolded in our Galaxy over the past millions of years. I do this using vast star cluster catalogs built with data from the ESA Gaia mission. Drag the time slider below to see for yourself.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, where I work in the group of Dr. Catherine Zucker. I recently completed my PhD at the University of Vienna under the supervision of Prof. João Alves.

First-author papers

Choose a paper to see its results in the figure.

• 2026 Supernova histories from young star clusters arXiv
• 2025 From moving groups to star formation A&A
• 2024 Three massive star-forming complexes Nature
• 2022 The Radcliffe Wave and the Orion Arm A&A
• 2021 Radial expansion at the core of Orion ApJ

This figure shows nearby star clusters in the local Milky Way and uses the time slider to rewind their motions, helping visualize when and where those clusters were likely born relative to surrounding Galactic structure. This is possible thanks to the precise astrometric data from the ESA Gaia mission.

The cluster sample is based on the Hunt & Reffert (2023) Gaia DR3 open cluster catalogue, and the dust distribution uses the Edenhofer et al. (2024) 3D dust map. Cluster orbits are traced backward through a model of the Milky Way's gravity that includes its spiral arms (Khalil et al. 2025), using galpy .

The figure is made with Oviz, an open-source viewer for the 3D Milky Way that I develop. Each paper under Research Highlights adds its own layer to it.

Background Milky Way image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar - CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.