Filaments are a ubiquitous morphological feature of the molecular interstellar medium and are identified as sites of star formation. In recent years, more than 100 large-scale filaments (with a length >10\,pc) have been observed in the inner Milky Way. As they appear linked to Galactic dynamics, studying those structures represents an opportunity to link kiloparsec-scale phenomena to the physics of star formation, which operates on much smaller scales. In this letter, we use newly acquired Outer Galaxy High Resolution Survey (OGHReS) 12CO(2-1) data to demonstrate that a significant number of large-scale filaments are present in the outer Galaxy as well. The 37 filaments identified appear tightly associated with inter-arm regions. In addition, their masses and linear masses are, on average, one order of magnitude lower than similar-sized molecular filaments located in the inner Galaxy, showing that Milky Way dynamics is able to create very elongated features in spite of the lower gas supply in the Galactic outskirts.
@article{arxiv.2111.02768,
title = {OGHReS: Large-scale filaments in the outer Galaxy},
author = {D. Colombo and C. König and J. S. Urquhart and F. Wyrowski and M. Mattern and K. M. Menten and M. -Y. Lee and J. Brand and M. Wienen and P. Mazumdar and F. Schuller and S. Leurini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.02768},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
5 pages (+ appendices, 9 pages), 8 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&A Letters