A New View of the Spiral Structure of the Northern Outer Milky Way in Carbon Monoxide

Abstract Based on 32,162 molecular clouds from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting project, we obtain new face-on molecular gas maps of the northern outer Galaxy. The total molecular gas surface density map reveals three segments of spirals, extending 16–43 kpc in length. The Perseus and Outer arms stand out prominently, appearing as quasi-continuous structures along most of their length. At the Galactic outskirts, about 1306 clouds connect the two segments of the new spiral arm discovered by T. M. Dame & P. Thaddeus (2011) in the first quadrant and Y. Sun et al. in the second quadrant, possibly extending the arm into the outer third quadrant. Logarithmic spirals can be fitted to the CO arm segments with pitch angles ranging from 4 ∘ to 12 ∘ . These CO arms extend beyond previous CO studies and the optical radius, reaching a Galactic radius of about 22 kpc, comparable to the H i radial range.

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Publication Details

Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Published
2024-12-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ad9605
Citations
6
Primary Topic
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.99

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article

A New View of the Spiral Structure of the Northern Outer Milky Way in Carbon Monoxide

Yan Sun, Deng-Rong Lu, Zhibo Jiang, X. G. Zhang et al.
6 citations
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
1.99
article

A New View of the Spiral Structure of the Northern Outer Milky Way in Carbon Monoxide

Yan Sun, Deng-Rong Lu, Zhibo Jiang, X. G. Zhang, Hongchi Wang, Ji Yang, Ji-Xian Sun, Yang Su, QING-ZENG YAN, Xin Zhou, Min Wang, Shaobo Zhang, Ye Xu, Xuepeng Chen, Bing-Gang Ju, M. Wang
article en
6 citations

Abstract

Abstract Based on 32,162 molecular clouds from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting project, we obtain new face-on molecular gas maps of the northern outer Galaxy. The total molecular gas surface density map reveals three segments of spirals, extending 16–43 kpc in length. The Perseus and Outer arms stand out prominently, appearing as quasi-continuous structures along most of their length. At the Galactic outskirts, about 1306 clouds connect the two segments of the new spiral arm discovered by T. M. Dame & P. Thaddeus (2011) in the first quadrant and Y. Sun et al. in the second quadrant, possibly extending the arm into the outer third quadrant. Logarithmic spirals can be fitted to the CO arm segments with pitch angles ranging from 4 ∘ to 12 ∘ . These CO arms extend beyond previous CO studies and the optical radius, reaching a Galactic radius of about 22 kpc, comparable to the H i radial range.

The Astrophysical Journal LettersVol. 977(2)
Purple Mountain Observatory (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Youth Innovation Promotion Association
Openalex Percentile: Top 14%
Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
1.99
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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