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Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies

arXiv:1710.06489 (astro-ph)
[Submitted on 17 Oct 2017]

Title:Mapping Spiral Structure on the far side of the Milky Way

Authors:Alberto Sanna, Mark J. Reid, Thomas M. Dame, Karl M. Menten, Andreas Brunthaler
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Abstract:Little is known about the portion of the Milky Way lying beyond the Galactic center at distances of more than 9 kilo-parsec from the Sun. These regions are opaque at optical wavelengths due to absorption by interstellar dust, and distances are very large and hard to measure. We report a direct trigonometric parallax distance of 20.4_{-2.2}^{+2.8} kilo-parsec obtained with the Very Long Baseline Array to a water maser source in a region of active star formation. These measurements allow us to shed light on Galactic spiral structure by locating the Scutum-Centaurus spiral arm as it passes through the far side of the Milky Way, and to validate a kinematic method for determining distances in this region based on transverse motions.
Comments:21 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, published in Science, October 13 issue
Subjects:Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as:arXiv:1710.06489 [astro-ph.GA]
 (or arXiv:1710.06489v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
 https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1710.06489
Journal reference:Science 13 Oct 2017: Vol. 358, Issue 6360, pp. 227-230
Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aan5452

Submission history

From: Alberto Sanna [view email]
[v1] Tue, 17 Oct 2017 20:08:07 UTC (246 KB)
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