The Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) Survey: Mapping the Milky Way with VLBI Astrometry†

By A. Brunthaler, M. J. Reid, K. Menten, Xing-wu Zheng, A. Bartkiewicz, Y. Choi, T. Dame, K. Hachisuka, K. Immer, G. Moellenbrock and 7 more. 2011

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Astrometric Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of maser sources in the Milky Way are used to map the spiral structure of our galaxy and to determine fundamental parameters such as the rotation velocity (Theta(0)) and curve and the distance to the Galactic center (R-0). Here, we present an update on our first results, implementing a recent change in the knowledge about the Solar motion. It seems unavoidable that the IAU recommended values for R0 and Theta(0) need a substantial revision. In particular the combination of 8.5 kpc and 220 km s(-1) can be ruled out with high confidence. Combining the maser data with the distance to the Galactic center from stellar orbits and the proper motion of Sgr A* gives best values of R-0 = 8.3 +/- 0.23 kpc and Theta(0) = 239 or 246 +/- 7 km s(-1), for Solar motions of V-circle dot = 12.23 and 5.25 km s(-1), respectively. Finally, we give an outlook to future observations in the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) survey. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5439917f071a3acacb4eb5617fd6ee30681178c0

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Citations in the corpus

The third realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame by very long baseline interferometry (2020, methodology): “Additional estimates can be inferred from measurements of parallax and proper motions of Galactic masers using VLBI phasereferenced techniques (Reid et al. 2009, 2014; Brunthaler et al. 2011; Honma et al. 2012).”
The Milky Way’s stellar disk (2013, background): “…allow for testing less constrained models, and the combination of stellar kinematics with good distances and the emerging results from the Galactic maser survey (Brunthaler et al. 2011) will be the most powerful constraints on global asymmetries of the Galactic potential, such a lopsidedness.”
The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way (2014, methodology): “A flat rotation curve (Reid et al. 2009b, 2014; Brunthaler et al. 2011) and the rotation curve of Brand & Blitz (1993, hereafter BB93) are adopted in calculating the kinematic distances.”
Parallaxes and proper motions of interstellar masers toward the Cygnus X star-forming complex. I. Membership of the Cygnus X region (2011, methodology): “These are the revised Galactic rotation parameters derived by Brunthaler et al. (2011) taking the recent revision of the solar peculiar motion into account, from the Hipparcosvalues (U⊙, V⊙, W⊙) = (10.00, 5.25, 7.17) km s−1 by Dehnen & Binney (1998) to (U⊙, V⊙, W⊙) = (11.10, 12.24, 7.25) km s−1 by…”
The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way (2016, background): “Reid et al. (2014) summarised the work of a number of groups, most notably the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy survey (BeSSeL,Brunthaler et al. 2011) and VLBI Exploration of Radio Astronomy (VERA,Honma et al. 2000), which have determined the parallaxes, proper motions and line-of-sight velocities…”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, background): “We can expect continuing improvements in the model of the MW as VLBI astrometry improves distance determinations of star forming regions across the MW (Reid et al. 2009; Brunthaler et al. 2011).”
The Hα surface brightness–radius relation: a robust statistical distance indicator for planetary nebulae (2015, methodology): “30 ± 0.23 kpc from Brunthaler et al. (2011).”
The Milky Way's rotation curve out to 100 kpc and its constraint on the Galactic mass distribution (2016, methodology): “Recently, accurate distances and values ofVlos have been measured for a number of masers1 by the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) survey (Brunthaler et al. 2011), allowing,principle, the determination of RC to a very high precision, say better than few km s−1 (e.g. Xin & Zheng 2013; Reid et…”
Galaxy Masses: A Review (2013, background): “(Brunthaler et al. (2011) analysed the same VLBI data but with updated values for the solar motion and found Vt = 239±7 km s−1.)”
A NEW ELECTRON-DENSITY MODEL FOR ESTIMATION OF PULSAR AND FRB DISTANCES (2016, methodology): “We adopt a distance of the Sun from the Galactic Center =R 8300 pc (Brunthaler et al. 2011).”
A compendium of distances to molecular clouds in the Star Formation Handbook (2020, unknown): “Based on the BeSSeL (Reid et al. 2014, 2016; Brunthaler et al. 2011) and GOBELINS surveys (Loinard et al. 2013), we identify sightlines within a projected distance of 50 pc from VLBI source positions in the following regions8: – Taurus (Galli et al. 2018), – Ophiuchus (Ortiz-León et al. 2017a), –…”