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200 papers

While the galactic density wave theory is over 50 years old and well known in science, whether it fits our own Milky Way disk has been difficult to say. Here we show a substructure inside the spiral arms. This substructure is reversing with…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-04-19 Jacques P Vallee

We explore the three-dimensional structure of a sample of $\sim$ 16000 young giant stars in the Galactic disc out to $\sim$8 kpc in heliocentric distance. This population traces a thin disc with a local vertical scale height of $h_{Z \odot}…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-14 E. Poggio , R. Drimmel , S. Khanna , R. Andrae , M. G. Lattanzi

Spiral arms shown by different components may not be spatially coincident, which can constrain formation mechanisms of spiral structure in a galaxy. We reassess the spiral arm tangency directions in the Milky Way through identifying the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-09-30 L. G. Hou , J. L. Han

The observed gas dynamics in the Milky Way can only be explained by a bar in the galactic center. Such a bar is directly visible in the near-IR maps of the bulge, where it causes a distinctive asymmetric light distribution pattern. Another…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Peter Englmaier

We derived the inner rotation curve (RC) of the Milky Way by applying the terminal velocity method (TVM) to the longitude-velocity diagrams (LVD) made from the large-scale survey data of the Galactic plane in the HI (HI4PI whole sky survey)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-02 Y. Sofue , M. Kohno

The lack of arm tracers, especially the remote tracers, is one of the most difficult problems preventing us from studying the structure of the Milky Way. Fortunately, with its high-sensitivity CO survey, the Milky Way Imaging Scroll…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-05-25 Xinyu Du , Ye Xu , Ji Yang , Yan Sun , Facheng Li , Shaobo Zhang , Xin Zhou

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of the Milky Way is mostly obscured by nearby gas in position-velocity space because we reside inside the Galaxy. Substantial biases exist in most studies on the Milky Way's CGM that focus on easier-to-detect…

Halpha and Hbeta spectroscopy with the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) reveals a strong concentration of high velocity emission in a ~ 5 by 5 deg area centered near (l.b) = (27,-3), known as the Scutum Cloud. The high velocities imply that…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 G. J. Madsen , R. J. Reynolds

Large stellar surveys are sensitive to interstellar dust through the effects of reddening. Using extinctions measured from photometry and spectroscopy, together with three-dimensional (3D) positions of individual stars, it is possible to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-10-31 Sara Rezaei Kh. , Coryn A. L. Bailer-Jones , David W. Hogg , Mathias Schultheis

CONTEXT. One of the most difficult and unexplored regions of the Milky Way is the highly extincted in-plane central region within the Galactic coordinates $10^\circ \lesssim |\ell |\lesssim 30^\circ $, $|b|\lesssim 3^\circ $, where we have…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-23 M. Lopez-Corredoira , W. Wu , H. -F. Wang , F. Garzon

By positional matching to the catalogue of Galactic Ring Survey molecular clouds, we have derived distances to 793 Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) sources out of a possible 806 located within the region defined by Galactic longitudes l…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-04 D. J. Eden , T. J. T. Moore , R. Plume , L. K. Morgan

The Milky Way spiral arms are well established from star counts as well as from the locus of molecular clouds and other young objects, however, they have only recently started to be observed from a kinematics point of view. Using the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-03-15 Luis Martinez-Medina , Angeles Pérez-Villegas , Antonio Peimbert

This article summarizes the structural parameters of the Galactic bulge and disk, and discusses the interpretation of the bulge microlensing observations and the determination of the Milky Way's luminous mass from the terminal velocity…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Ortwin Gerhard

The construction of an accurate 3D model of the Milky Way center is necessary to understand inflow processes that drive its overall evolution, and to compare our Galactic nucleus to other galaxies' nuclei. A main point of contention is the…

New 21cm HI observations made with the Green Bank Telescope show that the high-velocity cloud known as Smith's Cloud has a striking cometary appearance and many indications of interaction with the Galactic ISM. The velocities of interaction…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Felix J. Lockman , Robert A. Benjamin , A. J. Heroux , Glen I. Langston

Kinematic distances to 750 molecular clouds identified in the 13CO J=1-0 Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey (BU-FCRAO GRS) are derived assuming the Clemens rotation curve of the Galaxy. The…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2009-07-22 Julia Roman-Duval , James M. Jackson , Mark Heyer , Alexis Johnson , Jill Rathborne , Ronak Shah , Robert Simon

The North Polar Spur (NPS) is one of the largest structures observed in the Milky Way in both the radio and soft x-rays. While several predictions have been made regarding the origin of the NPS, modelling the structure is difficult without…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-10-28 Kaustav K. Das , Catherine Zucker , Joshua S. Speagle , Alyssa Goodman , Gregory M. Green , João Alves

Using spectral-line observations of HNCO, N2H+, and HNC, we investigate the kinematics of dense gas in the central ~250 pc of the Galaxy. We present SCOUSE (Semi-automated multi-COmponent Universal Spectral-line fitting Engine), a line…

From our catalog of Milky Way molecular clouds, created using a temperature thresholding algorithm on the Bell Laboratories 13CO Survey, we have extracted two subsets:(1) Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), clouds that are definitely larger than…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-30 Antony A. Stark , Youngung Lee

Classical and Type II Cepheids are used to reinvestigate specific properties of the Galaxy. A new Type II reddening-free Cepheid distance parameterization is formulated from LMC Cepheids (OGLE), with uncertainties typically no larger than…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2014-11-18 Daniel J. Majaess , David G. Turner , David J. Lane