ON THE NATURE OF THE LOCAL SPIRAL ARM OF THE MILKY WAY
By Y. Xu, J. Li, M. J. Reid, K. Menten, X. Zheng, A. Brunthaler, L. Moscadelli, T. Dame, B. Zhang. 2013
135 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Trigonometric parallax measurements of nine water masers associated with the Local Arm of the Milky Way were carried out as part of the BeSSeL Survey using the Very Long Baseline Array. When combined with 21 other parallax measurements from the literature, the data allow us to study the distribution and three-dimensional motions of star forming regions in the spiral arm over the entire northern sky. Our results suggest that the Local Arm does not have the large pitch angle characteristic of a short spur. Instead its active star formation, overall length (>5 kpc), and shallow pitch angle (∼10°) suggest that it is more like the adjacent Perseus and Sagittarius Arms; perhaps it is a branch of one of these arms. Contrary to previous results, we find the Local Arm to be closer to the Perseus than to the Sagittarius Arm, suggesting that a branching from the former may be more likely. An average peculiar motion of near zero toward both the Galactic center and north Galactic pole, and counter rotation of ∼5 km s−1 were observed, indicating that the Local Arm has similar kinematic properties as found for other major spiral arms.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a9b1a1f74e0b34c0fec0720d58d6e4fb1f162646
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way (2014, methodology): “In addition, the more reliable trigonometric or photometric distances of a number of HII regions or masers have been measured (e.g., Rygl et al. 2010; Sato et al. 2010a; Moisés et al. 2011; Xu et al. 2011, 2013; Russeil et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2014; Foster & Brunt 2014).”
- On the fine structure of the Cepheid metallicity gradient in the Galactic thin disk (2014, methodology): “We adopted this empirical calibration because Xu et al. (2013) found that the latter disk model fits quite well the parallax data of 30 masers associated with star-forming regions in the Perseus and in Sagittariusarms.”
- TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAXES OF HIGH MASS STAR FORMING REGIONS: THE STRUCTURE AND KINEMATICS OF THE MILKY WAY (2014, background): “1), and details of the locations and properties of the individual arms can be found in the primary references (Hachisuka et al. 2014; Choi et al. 2014; Zhang et al. 2013a; Xu et al. 2013; Wu et al. 2014; Sato et al. 2014; Sanna et al. 2014).”
- A compendium of distances to molecular clouds in the Star Formation Handbook (2020, unknown): “21+2.32”; Xu et al. 2013), – NGC 2362 (“VYCMa”; Zhang et al. 2012), – S106 (“G076.”
- Trigonometric Parallaxes of High-mass Star-forming Regions: Our View of the Milky Way (2019, methodology): “The Local arm has been mapped in detail by Xu et al. (2013, 2016).”
- THE WISE CATALOG OF GALACTIC H ii REGIONS (2013, unknown): “…et al. 2010b; (32) Sewilo et al. 2004b; (33) Shiozaki et al. 2011; (34) Urquhart et al. 2012; (35) Urquhart et al. 2012/Roman-Duval et al. 2009; (36) Watson et al. 2003; (37) Wu et al. 2012; (38) Xu et al. 2006; (39) Xu et al. 2009; (40) Xu et al. 2011; (41) Xu et al. 2013; (42) Zhang et al. 2009.”
- Microarcsecond Radio Astrometry (2013, background): “Recent surprises include that the Local (Orion) arm, thought to be a minor structure, is longer and has far more on-going star formation than previously thought and rivals the Perseus spiral arm in the second and third Galactic quadrants (Xu et al. 2013).”
- Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, background): “Localized regions with densities much larger than these mean volume densities are directly identified with high-density gas tracers, such as CS, HCN, and N2H+ emission lines, or inferred from submillimeter thermal dust continuum emission.”