Face-on schematic view of the distribution of IRDCs (green triangles) and ISOSS sources (red squares) and the HMSC 07029 (blue triangle) in the Milky Way. The background image is an artist’s impression of the Milky Way based on the GLIMPSE survey, credit R. Hurt [SSC-Caltech], adapted by MPIA graphics department. The kinematic distances to each object are derived using the Reid et al. (2009) model.