The Astrophysical Environment of the Solar Birthplace
  Our Sun, like all stars, formed within a cold molecular cloud. Astronomical
observations and theory provide considerable detail into this process. Yet
cosmochemical observations of short lived radionuclides in primitive
meteorites, in particular 60Fe, provide unequivocal evidence that the early
solar system inherited fresh nucleosynthetic material from the core of a hot,
massive star, almost certainly ejected in a supernova explosion. I give a short
introduction to the fields of star formation and meteoritics and discuss how
the reconciliation of their disparate clues to our origin places strong
constraints on the environment of the Solar birthplace. Direct injection of
supernova ejecta into a protoplanetary disk or a dense molecular core is
unlikely since their small sizes require placement unusually close to the
massive star. Lower density molecular cloud clumps can capture more ejecta but
the radionuclides decay during the slow gravitational collapse. The most likely
scenario is on the largest scales via the formation of enriched molecular
clouds at the intersection of colliding supernova bubbles in spiral arms.
