"We used to think that all stellar nurseries across every galaxy must look more or less the same, but this survey has revealed that this is not the case, and stellar nurseries change from place to place," lead author Adam Leroy, associate professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University, said in a statement. "These nurseries are responsible for building galaxies and making planets, and they're just an essential part in the story of how we got here."
This five-year survey was tackled using a small segment of the cosmos called the nearby universe, due to its convenient location near our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers engaged in the study employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope sitting in Chile's Atacama Desert for this new mapping endeavor.