The local spiral structure of the Milky Way

Xu, Ye; Reid, M. J.; Dame, T. M.; Menten, K. M.; Sakai, Nobuyuki; Li, Jingjing; Brunthaler, A.; Moscadelli, L.; Zhang, B.; Zheng, Xingwu

doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600878

Cited by 90 publications

(134 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The grey background image represents the spatial distribution of the OB stars from Chen et al (2019a). The green, pink and blue dashed lines mark respectively a possible spur 'Lower Sagittarius-Carina Spur', the 'split' found by Lallement et al (2019) and the spur identified by Xu et al (2016). Three black dashed circles mark the positions of three possible hole patterns in the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms identified in Chen et al (2019a).…”

Section: Comparison With Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The model line of the Local arm, derived from the OB stars and masers, goes along the upper boundary of Cavity 2, and through the centre of Cavity 1. The lower boundaries of the two cavities seem to be the foreground structure of the spur identified by Xu et al (2016) that connects the Local and the Sagittarius Arms at a pitch angle of " 18˝(the blue dashed line in Fig. 7).…”

Section: The Galactic Spiral Structure As Traced By the Molecular Cloudsmentioning

confidence: 97%

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A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disc

Chen

Yuan

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We present a large, homogeneous catalogue of molecular clouds within 4 kpc from the Sun at low Galactic latitudes (|b| ă 10˝) with unprecedented accurate distance determinations. Based on the three-dimensional dust reddening map and estimates of colour excesses and distances of over 32 million stars presented in Chen et al, we have identified 567 dust/molecular clouds with a hierarchical structure identification method and obtained their distance estimates by a dust model fitting algorithm. The typical distance uncertainty is less than 5 per cent. As far as we know, this is the first large catalogue of molecular clouds in the Galactic plane with distances derived in a direct manner. The clouds are seen to lie along the Sagittarius, Local and Perseus Arms. In addition to the known structures, we propose the existence of a possible spur, with a pitch angle of about 34˝, connecting the Local and the Sagittarius Arms in the fourth quadrant. We have also derived the physical properties of those molecular clouds. The distribution of cloud properties in different parameter spaces agrees grossly with the previous results. Our cloud sample is an ideal starting point to study the concentration of dust and gas in the solar vicinity and their star formation activities.

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Section: Comparison With Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: The Galactic Spiral Structure As Traced By the Molecular Cloudsmentioning

confidence: 97%

A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disc

Chen

Yuan

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…The number of star-particles is distributed between the four MSAs and the LA in such a way that the stellar densities of these arms are comparable (e.g. Xu et al 2016). In this way, to each MSA, we attribute a number of 2.56 × 10 7 test particles; to the LA, 1.024 × 10 7 test particles are attributed; and finally, 2.56 × 10 7 test particles are uniformly distributed in the stellar disk background.…”

Section: Initial Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Origin of Moving Groups and Diagonal Ridges by Simulations of Stellar Orbits and Birthplaces

Barros¹,

Pérez-Villegas

Lépine

et al. 2020

ApJ

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The present paper is the culminating one of a series aimed to contribute to the understanding of the kinematic structures of the solar neighbourhood (SN), explaining the origin of the Local Arm and relating the moving groups with the spiral-arms resonances in the disk. With a model for the Galactic potential, with the Sun inside the spiral corotation resonance (CR), we integrate the 2D orbits of test particles distributed in birthplaces along the main spiral arms, the Local Arm, and in the axisymmetric disk. A comparison of the resulting U -V plane of the SN with that provided by Gaia DR2 confirms our previous conclusion that the moving groups of Coma Berenices, Pleiades, and Hyades are associated with the CR, and that the Hercules stream is formed by the bulk of highorder inner Lindblad resonances. The kinematic structures result from stellar orbits trapped by the spiral resonances in a timespan of ∼ 1 Gyr, indicating the long-living nature of the spiral structure and challenging recent arguments in favor of short-lived structures originated from incomplete phase mixing in the Galactic disk. As a byproduct, our simulations give some insight into the birthplaces of the stars presently located in the SN; the majority of stars of the main moving groups and the Hercules stream were likely born in the Local Arm, while stars of the Sirius group possibly originated from the outer segment of the Sagittarius-Carina arm. We also propose the spiral resonances as the dynamical origin for the diagonal ridges in the Galactic distribution of rotation velocities.

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“…Molecular cloud distances are essential to the study of star formation (McKee & Ostriker 2007;Heyer & Dame 2015;Foster & Brunt 2015;Motte et al 2018) and the Galactic structure (Dame et al 2001;Xu et al 2016Xu et al , 2018a. They are raw materials from which new stars form (Kennicutt & Evans 2012) and are spiral arm tracers (Dame et al 2001;Donovan Meyer et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Molecular Cloud Distances Based on the MWISP CO Survey and Gaia DR2

Yan

Yang

Sun

et al. 2019

ApJ

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We present a new method of calculating distances of molecular clouds in the Galactic plane, using CO observations and the Gaia DR2 parallax and G-band extinction (A G ) measurements. Due to the complexity of dust environments in the Galactic plane, A G contains irregular variations, which is difficult to model. To overcome this difficulty, we propose that the A G of off-cloud stars (Gaia stars around molecular clouds) can be used as a baseline to calibrate the A G of on-cloud stars (Gaia stars toward molecular clouds), which removes the A G components that are unrelated to molecular clouds. The distance is subsequently inferred from the jump point in on-cloud A G with Bayesian analysis and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. We applied this baseline subtraction method to a 100 deg 2 region (209.75 • ≤ l ≤ 219.75 • and |b| ≤ 5 • ) in the third Galactic quadrant, which was mapped as part of the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting (MWISP) project, covering three CO isotopologue lines, and derived distances and masses for 11 molecular clouds, including the Maddalena molecular cloud and Sh 2-287. The results indicate that the distance of the Perseus Arm in this region is about 2.4 kpc and molecular clouds are present in the interarm regions.

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The local spiral structure of the Milky Way

Abstract: Researchers have only recently begun to trace the spiral structure of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and already find surprising results.

Cited by 90 publications

References 38 publications

A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disc

A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disc

Exploring the Origin of Moving Groups and Diagonal Ridges by Simulations of Stellar Orbits and Birthplaces

Molecular Cloud Distances Based on the MWISP CO Survey and Gaia DR2

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