Origin of isolated superclumps in the Malpolon and Vela Ridge Clouds

Determine whether the isolated superclumps excluded from the 800 pc spacing analysis of the Malpolon Cloud and Vela Ridge Cloud are physical outliers or artifacts of incompleteness in the Edenhofer et al. dust map and distance uncertainties, using next-generation dust maps.

Background

The study identifies characteristic spacings between dense superclumps along the spines of six local Milky Way superclouds. In the Malpolon Cloud and Vela Ridge Cloud, isolated superclumps produce unusually large separations exceeding 800 pc, so those separations are excluded from the representative spacing analysis.

The authors note that the anomalous separations may have a physical origin, or may instead result from incompleteness at high densities in the underlying Gaia-based dust map and from distance uncertainties. They explicitly leave this distinction unresolved and identify next-generation dust maps as the means by which it can be tested.

References

Whether this reflects a physical outlier or an effect of the map incompleteness will be testable with the next generation of dust maps.

— The superclumps of the local Milky Way. Supercloud fragmentation and the sites of star formation  (2608.21028 - Kormann et al., 21 Aug 2026) in Section 4.2, “Superclump spacing”