Related papers: The Bones of the Milky Way
The details of the spiral structure of the Milky Way are still debated due to large uncertainties in the distance estimates obtained through the most common tracers. X-ray dust scattering rings produced by short extragalactic X-ray…
An increasing number of hundred-parsec scale, high line-mass filaments have been detected in the Galaxy. Their evolutionary path, including fragmentation towards star formation, is virtually unknown. We characterize the fragmentation within…
The estimated total number of Milky Way globulars is 160+-20. The question of whether there are any more undiscovered globular clusters in the Milky Way is particularly relevant with advances in near and mid-IR instrumentation. This…
The nuclear stellar disc (NSD) is a dense stellar structure at the centre of our Galaxy. Given its proximity, it constitutes a unique laboratory to understand other galactic nuclei. Nevertheless, the high crowding and extinction hamper its…
An up-to-date overview of the recent history is given, aiming to present a helpful working guide to the literature and at the same time introduce key systems and observational results, starting from the Sun and going towards the Galactic…
In spite of much work, the overall spiral structure morphology of the Milky Way remains somewhat uncertain. In the last two decades, accurate distance measurements have provided us with an opportunity to solve this issue. Using the precise…
Determining the properties of the warm ionized medium (WIM) at the leading edge of spiral arms is important for understanding its dynamics and cloud formation. The inner edge of the Scutum arm tangency is a unique location in which to…
A set of diffuse interstellar clouds in the inner Galaxy within a few hundred pc of the Galactic plane has been observed at an angular resolution of ~1 arcmin combining data from the NRAO Green Bank Telescope and the Very Large Array. At…
We compile and analyze ~200 trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of molecular masers associated with very young high-mass stars. These measurements strongly suggest that the Milky Way is a four-arm spiral. Fitting log-periodic…
The morphology of the Milky Way is still a matter of debate. In order to shed light on uncertainties surrounding the structure of the Galaxy, in this paper, we study the imprint of spiral arms on the distribution and properties of its…
The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not yet well determined. The keys to understanding this structure are to increase the number of reliable spiral tracers and to determine their distances as accurately as possible. HII regions, giant…
Observations of HI published in 1957 by Westerhout and Schmidt were presented as showing a global face-on view of spiral structure in the Milky Way. Since then many studies have attempted to improve on the early map, perhaps presupposing…
This Letter presents a study of the geometry and motion of the Galactic disk using open clusters in the Gaia era. The findings suggest that the inclination of the Galactic disk increases gradually from the inner to the outer disk, with a…
The Galactic plane has been mapped from l=34.75d to 45.25d and b=-5.25d to 5.25d in the CO (J=1-0) emission with the 13.7 m telescope of the Purple Mountain Observatory. The unbiased survey covers a large area of 100 square degrees sampled…
Within the central 10pc of our Galaxy lies a dense nuclear star cluster (NSC), and similar NSCs are found in most nearby galaxies. Studying the structure and kinematics of NSCs reveals the history of mass accretion of galaxy nuclei. Because…
While it is incontrovertible that the inner Galaxy contains a bar, its structure near the Galactic plane has remained uncertain, where extinction from intervening dust is greatest. We investigate here the Galactic bar outside the bulge, the…
We have identified a new structure in the Milky Way: a leading component of the Smith high velocity cloud that is now crossing the Galactic plane near longitude 25 degrees. Using new 21cm HI data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) we…
The position of the Sun inside the Milky Way's disc hampers the study of the spiral arm structure. We aim to analyse the spiral arms along the line-of-sight towards the Galactic centre (GC) to determine their distance, extinction, and…
In this work we demonstrate that the Perseus Arm is not a continuous structure of molecular gas in the second quadrant. We first show that the observed, distanced-resolved velocity structure of the Galaxy in the outer disk is capable of…
The census of stellar streams and dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way provides direct constraints on galaxy formation models and the nature of dark matter. The DESI Milky Way survey (with a footprint of 14,000$~deg{^2}$ and a depth of $r<19$…