A 100 pc ELLIPTICAL AND TWISTED RING OF COLD AND DENSE MOLECULAR CLOUDS REVEALED BY HERSCHEL AROUND THE GALACTIC CENTER

By Sergio Molinari, J. Bally, A. Noriega-Crespo, Mathieu Compiègne, J. Bernard, D. Paradis, P. Martin, L. Testi, M. Barlow, T. Moore and 31 more. 2011

251 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Thermal images of cold dust in the Central Molecular Zone of the Milky Way, obtained with the far-infrared cameras on board the Herschel satellite, reveal a ∼3 × 107 M☉ ring of dense and cold clouds orbiting the Galactic center. Using a simple toy model, an elliptical shape having semi-major axes of 100 and 60 pc is deduced. The major axis of this 100 pc ring is inclined by about 40° with respect to the plane of the sky and is oriented perpendicular to the major axes of the Galactic Bar. The 100 pc ring appears to trace the system of stable x2 orbits predicted for the barred Galactic potential. Sgr A⋆ is displaced with respect to the geometrical center of symmetry of the ring. The ring is twisted and its morphology suggests a flattening ratio of 2 for the Galactic potential, which is in good agreement with the bulge flattening ratio derived from the 2MASS data.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd8fbdd6b7688c008dcd58637796e89138a64613

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Molecular gas kinematics within the central 250 pc of the Milky Way (2016, background): “The Molinari et al. (2011) interpretation predicts that Sgr C is very close to apocentre.”
The dust covering factor in active galactic nuclei (2016, background): “Finally, such two-phase structures have been actually observed in the central regions of Milky Way (the so-called Central Molecular Zone and Circumnuclear Disk) and it has been suggested that they represent a remnant of a dusty torus that may have played a role in past AGN phases of our Galaxy (Moli”
Spectral imaging of the Central Molecular Zone in multiple 3-mm molecular lines (2011, background): “In particular, the twisted cold dust ring noted by Molinari et al. (2011) is apparent in the N2H+ peak velocity image.”
Star formation rates and efficiencies in the Galactic Centre (2017, methodology): “For the volumetric model, they then calculate the volume density by assuming that the gas at |l| < 1◦ is distributed in a ring-like stream with a radius of ∼100 pc (Molinari et al. 2011).”
Variations in the Galactic star formation rate and density thresholds for star formation (2012, methodology): “On top of the modelling which successfully reproducesth gas kinematic structure (Molinari et al. 2011), analysis ofemission from many high critical density molecular line transitionsshow the majority of the gas in the CMZ is cold, has a density&104 cm−3 and a volume filling factor of only a few…”
Hi-GAL, the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey: Photometric maps and compact source catalogues: First data release for the inner Milky Way: +68° ≥ l ≥ -70° (2016, methodology): “…et al. 2012; Veneziani et al. 2013; Beltrán et al. 2013; Strafella et al. 2015; Traficante et al. 2015), Galactic Central Molecular Zone studies (Molinari et al., 2011a; Longmore et al., 2012), triggered star formation (Zavagno et al., 2010) and finally dust around post-Main Sequence objects…”
Surface brightness profile of the Milky Way’s nuclear star cluster (2014, methodology): “It traces very similar features as the opacity (atomic hydrogen density) map derived by Molinari et al. (2011) from Herschel far infrared observations.”
Dense gas in the Galactic central molecular zone is warm and heated by turbulence (2015, background): “G ∼ 100 pc1 “ring” including the dust ridge (Lis et al. 1991; Sofue 1995; Molinari et al. 2011) contains most of the dense gas.”
The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “Adapted from Launhardt et al. (2002) with permission, c© ESO. related to past star formation in the zone of x2-orbits near the center of the barred potential (e.g., Molinari et al. 2011).”
The dynamical evolution of molecular clouds near the Galactic Centre - I. Orbital structure and evolutionary timeline (2014, methodology): “In addition to these successes, a more detailed comparison of the Molinari et al. (2011) model and the NH3(1, 1) observations also reveals several areas of improvement for new models (see§3).”
HERSCHEL SURVEY OF GALACTIC OH+, H2O+, AND H3O+: PROBING THE MOLECULAR HYDROGEN FRACTION AND COSMIC-RAY IONIZATION RATE (2014, background): “Different studies place Sgr B2 in front of (Reid et al. 2009) or behind (Molinari et al. 2011) Sgr A*, but always within ∼ 150 pc, and we adopt d = 8.34 kpc, as the precise location is not vital to our study.”
What controls star formation in the central 500 pc of the Galaxy (2013, background): “The first three rows list the properties of the CMZ, where we distinguish two components (the 100-pc ring described by Molinari et al. 2011 and the1.”