Parallaxes and proper motions of interstellar masers toward the Cygnus X star-forming complex. I. Membership of the Cygnus X region

By K. Rygl, A. Brunthaler, A. Sanna, K. Menten, M. J. Reid, H. Langevelde, M. Honma, K. Torstensson, K. F. INAF-IFSI, Mpifr and 6 more. 2011

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Whether the Cygnus X complex consists of one physically connected region of star formation or of multiple independent regions projected close together on the sky has been debated for decades. The main reason for this puzzling scenario is the lack of trustworthy distance measurements. Aims. We aim to understand the structure and dynamics of the star-forming regions toward Cygnus X by accurate distance and proper motion measurements. Methods. To measure trigonometric parallaxes, we observed 6.7 GHz methanol and 22 GHz water masers with the European VLBI Network and the Very Long Baseline Array. Results. We measured the trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of five massive star-forming regions toward the Cygnus X complex and report the following distances within a 10% accuracy: 1.30 +0.07 ―0.07 kpc for W 75N, 1.46 +0.09 ―0.08 kpc for DR 20, 1.50 +0.08 ―0.07 kpc for DR 21, 1.36 +0.12 ―0.11 kpc for IRAS 20290+4052, and 3.33 +0.11 ―0.11 kpc for AFGL 2591. While the distances of W 75N, DR 20, DR 21, and IRAS 20290+4052 are consistent with a single distance of 1.40 ± 0.08 kpc for the Cygnus X complex, AFGL 2591 is located at a much greater distance than previously assumed. The space velocities of the four star-forming regions in the Cygnus X complex do not suggest an expanding Stromgren sphere.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ca06037416670ef25eb21db56a4459a6be67c95

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. K. Menten
2. M. J. Reid
3. T. Dame
4. M. Honma
5. Fr'ed'erique Motte
6. F. Wyrowski
7. Simon Bruderer
8. A. Brunthaler

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. M. Wolfire
2. J. Black
3. M. J. Reid
4. E. Falgarone
5. J. Bernard
6. Simon Bruderer

Citations in the corpus

• The spine of the swan: a Herschel study of the DR21 ridge and filaments in Cygnus X (2012, background): “This study focusses on the DR21 ridge (also called DR21 filament), the densest and most massive cloud structure in the Cygnus X region (Schneider et al. 2006; Motte et al. 2007; Roy et al. 2011) at a distance of 1.4 kpc (Rygl et al. 2012).”
• Fundamental Parameters of the Milky Way Galaxy Based on VLBI Astrometry (2012, unknown): “…(19) Motogi et al. 2011, (20) Nagayama et al. 2011a, (21) Nagayama et al. 2011b, (22) Niinuma et al. 2011, (23) Oh et al. 2010, (24) Reid et al. 2009a, (25) Rygl et al. 2010, (26) Rygl et al. 2012, (27) Sakai et al. 2012, (28) Sanna et al. 2009, (29) Sanna et al. 2012, (30) Sato et al. 2008, (31)…”
• THE WISE CATALOG OF GALACTIC H ii REGIONS (2013, methodology): “Finally, we assign all sources from 74◦ < < 86◦ that have LSR velocities between −15 km s−1 and 15 km s−1 to the Cygnus complex, using the maser parallax distance of DR 21 (Rygl et al. 2012).”
• ON THE NATURE OF THE LOCAL SPIRAL ARM OF THE MILKY WAY (2013, background): “(3) The Local arm is an independent spiral arm segment, which consists of numerous major star-forming regions, such as Cygnus X region (Rygl et al. 2012), with similar Galactocentric distances and space velocities (see Section 5).”
• Microarcsecond Radio Astrometry (2013, result): “…0.25 mas for nine sources, whose distances ranged from 20 to 150 pc. Dzib et al. (2013) monitored radio emission from colliding winds in Cyg OB2#5 and obtained a marginal parallax of 0.61±0.22 mas, consistent with other distance measurements of Cyg X regions (Rygl et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2012b).”
• HERSCHEL SURVEY OF GALACTIC OH+, H2O+, AND H3O+: PROBING THE MOLECULAR HYDROGEN FRACTION AND COSMIC-RAY IONIZATION RATE (2014, background): “The molecular gas associated with the protostars has a velocity of −5.5 km s−1 (van der Tak et al. 1999), and H2O maser observations give a distance of 3.33 kpc (Rygl et al. 2012).”
• TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAXES OF HIGH MASS STAR FORMING REGIONS: THE STRUCTURE AND KINEMATICS OF THE MILKY WAY (2014, unknown): “…et al. (2010), 20:Nagayama et al. (2011), 21:Xu et al. (2013), 22:Sanna et al. (2012), 23:Ando et al. (2011), 24:Moscadelli et al. (20110(@), 25:Rygl et al. (2012), 26:Zhang et al. (2012b), 27:Hachisuka et al. (2014), 28:Choi et al. (2014), 29:Hirota et al. (2008), 30:Moscadelli et al. (2009),…”