GALACTIC MASERS AND THE MILKY WAY CIRCULAR VELOCITY

By Jo Bovy, David W. Hogg, Hans-Walter Rix. 2009

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Masers found in massive star-forming regions can be located precisely in six-dimensional phase space and therefore serve as a tool for studying Milky Way dynamics. The non-random orbital phases at which the masers are found and the sparseness of current samples require modeling. Here, we model the phase-space distribution function of 18 precisely measured Galactic masers, permitting a mean velocity offset and a general velocity dispersion tensor relative to their local standards of rest, and accounting for different pieces of prior information. With priors only on the Sun's distance from the Galactic Center and on its motion with respect to the local standard of rest, the maser data provide a weak constraint on the circular velocity at the Sun of Vc = 246 ± 30 km s−1. Including prior information on the proper motion of Sgr A* leads to Vc = 244 ± 13 km s−1. We do not confirm the value of Vc ≈ 254 km s−1 found in more restrictive models. This analysis shows that there is no conflict between recent determinations of Vc from Galactic Center analyses, orbital fitting of the GD-1 stellar stream, and the kinematics of Galactic masers; a combined estimate is Vc = 236 ± 11 km s−1. Apart from the dynamical parameters, we find that masers tend to occur at post-apocenter, circular-velocity-lagging phases of their orbits.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8da0b3db3130db979c78449db3f6d2f79fdda730

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Citations in the corpus

Lectures on Dark Matter Physics (2016, methodology): “Pure annihilation channel limits for the Galactic Center H.E.S.S. observations are taken from Abazajian and Harding [37] and assume an Einasto Milky Way density profile with ⇢ = 0.389 GeV cm 3.”
Galaxy Masses: A Review (2013, background): “In particular, our distance to the Galactic center and the circular speed at the position of the Sun remain uncertain at the 5% level (Ghez et al. 2008; Gillessen et al. 2009; Reid et al. 2009; Bovy et al. 2009; Brunthaler et al. 2011; Schönrich 2012).”
The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way (2016, methodology): “They have therefore been used by numerous authors to constrain the properties of the Milky Way (e.g.,Reid et al. 2009a; McMillan & Binney 2010; Bovy et al. 2009; Bobylev & Bajkova 2013; Reid et al. 2014, Paper I).”
The dark matter density at the Sun’s location (2010, methodology): “For this we adopt the reference value and uncertainty r D = 3.4 ± 0.52, as suggested by the values of RD given above and by the average of values of R obtained in recent works R = 8.2 ± 0.5 kpc (Ghez et al. 2008; Gillessen et al. 2008; Bovy et al. 2009).”
A DIRECT DYNAMICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK SURFACE DENSITY PROFILE, DISK SCALE LENGTH, AND DARK MATTER PROFILE AT 4 kpc ≲ R ≲ 9 kpc (2013, background): “…pole (Chen et al. 2001; Jurić et al. 2008), that the Sun is located at 8 kpc from the Galactic center (e.g., Ghez et al. 2008; Gillessen et al. 2009; Bovy et al. 2009), and that the Sun’s vertical peculiar velocity with respect to the Galactic center is 7.25 km s−1 (Schönrich et al. 5 In this…”
Determination of the Local Dark Matter Density in our Galaxy (2009, methodology): “10 a rotation velocity of the Sun 244± 10 km s−1, (13) which is consistent with recent observations of Galactic masers in Bovy et al. (2009), who used data from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Japanese VLBI Exploration of Radio Astronomy (VERA).”
The Local Dark Matter Density (2012, methodology): “For this we adopt the reference value and uncertaintyr⊙D = 3.4±0.5, as suggested by the values ofRD discussed above and by the average of values ofR⊙ obtained recently:R⊙ = 8.2±0.5kpc (Ghez et al. (2008); Gillessen et al. (2008); Bovy et al. (2009)).”
THE MILKY WAY'S CIRCULAR-VELOCITY CURVE BETWEEN 4 AND 14 kpc FROM APOGEE DATA (2012, background): “…streams or “moving groups” (e.g., Kapteyn 1905; Schwarzschild 1907; Eggen 1986; Dehnen 1998; Bovy et al. 2009b) that are likely of a dynamical origin (Bensby et al. 2007; Famaey et al. 2008; Bovy & Hogg 2010; Sellwood 2010) and contain a significant fraction of the nearby stars (Bovy et al. 2009b).”
The Milky Way’s bright satellites as an apparent failure of ΛCDM (2011, methodology): “A combined Bayesian analysis by Bovy et al. (2009), which incorporates maser distances but uses greater freedom in the modeling than was allowed for in either Reid et al. or Ando et al., gives Vc(R0) = 236 ± 11 km s−1.”
ON THE LOCAL DARK MATTER DENSITY (2012, methodology): “We use R0 = 8 kpc, as do MB12, and local circular speed Vc = 220 km s −1 throughout this paper, assumptions which are consistent with the latest measurements (Bovy et al. 2009).”
MAPPING THE STELLAR STRUCTURE OF THE MILKY WAY THICK DISK AND HALO USING SEGUE PHOTOMETRY (2009, result): “Since the density in each bin, 7 As R⊙ is still not very well determined (e.g. Bovy et al. 2009), we have also used values of 7.1 and 8.1 kpc for R⊙ and found the effects of these changes on the fit results to be negligible compared to the uncertainties quoted in Table 3.”
THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF MONO-ABUNDANCE SUB-POPULATIONS OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2011, methodology): “…& Carlberg 1984; Carlberg & Sellwood 1985; Sellwood & Lin 1989) and observationally from surveys of the Solar neighborhood (e.g., Dehnen 1998; De Simone, Wu, & Tremaine 2004; Bovy et al. 2009a; Bovy & Hogg 2010; Sellwood 2011) and of external galaxies (e.g., Meidt et al. 2009; Foyle et al. 2011).”
TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAXES OF HIGH MASS STAR FORMING REGIONS: THE STRUCTURE AND KINEMATICS OF THE MILKY WAY (2014, methodology): “The Bovy et al. (2009) re-analysis of our preliminary data employed a different ap- proach than that of Reid et al. (2009b).”
The Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL) Survey: Mapping the Milky Way with VLBI Astrometry† (2011, methodology): “Note that the same data set has been also analyzed by Bovy et al. (2009), McMillan & Binney (2010), and Bobylev & Bajkova (2010).”