Related papers: What Does the Milky Way Look Like?
The nature of the spiral structure of the Milky Way has long been debated. Only in the last decade have astronomers been able to accurately measure distances to a substantial number of high-mass star-forming regions, the classic tracers of…
We consider the possible pattern of the overall spiral structure of the Galaxy, using data on the distribution of neutral (atomic), molecular, and ionized hydrogen, on the base of the hypothesis of the spiral structure being symmetric, i.e.…
As a relatively young and bright population and the archetype of standard candles, classical Cepheids are an ideal population on which to trace the non-axisymmetric structure in the young stellar disk to large distances. We used the new…
The morphology and kinematics of the spiral structure of the Milky Way is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. In this review we firstly summarize various methods with different tracers used to solve this puzzle. The astrometry of…
Studying the nature of spiral arms is essential for understanding the formation of the intricate disc structure of the Milky Way. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission has provided revolutionary observational data that have uncovered…
The spiral structure in the Solar neighborhood is an important issue in astronomy. In the past few years, there is significant progress in observation. The distances for a large number of good spiral tracers, i.e. giant molecular clouds,…
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with the Schechter characteristic luminosity $L_*$, thus an important anchor point of the Hubble sequence of all spiral galaxies. Yet the true appearance of the Milky Way has remained elusive for centuries.…
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…
We investigate the structure of the Milky Way by determining how features in a spatial map correspond to CO features in a velocity map. We examine structures including logarithmic spiral arms, a ring and a bar. We explore the available…
A complete map of the 3D distribution of molecular (CO) gas was constructed using a realistic dynamical model of the gas flow in the barred potential of the Milky Way. The map shows two prominent spiral arms starting at the bar ends…
We produce a detailed map of the perturbed surface density of neutral hydrogen in the outer Milky Way disk demonstrating that the Galaxy is a non-axisymmetric multi-armed spiral. Spiral structure in the southern half of the Galaxy can be…
Trigonometric parallax measurements of nine water masers associated with the Local arm of the Milky Way were carried out as part of the BeSSeL Survey using the VLBA. When combined with 21 other parallax measurements from the literature, the…
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…
To estimate the parameters of the Galactic spiral structure - namely, the pitch angle i and the number of spiral arms,- data on Galactic masers with known trigonometric parallaxes were used. We applied the well-known method based on…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
The structure and evolution of the spiral arms of our Milky Way are basic but long-standing questions in astronomy. In particular, the lifetime of spiral arms is still a puzzle and has not been well constrained from observations. In this…
We carry out analyses of some parameters of the galactic spiral arms, in the currently available samples. We present a catalog of the observed pitch angle for each spiral arm in the Milky Way disk. For each long spiral arm in the Milky Way,…
Based on 32162 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,…
The structural parameters of a galaxy can be used to gain insight into its formation and evolution history. In this paper, we strive to compare the Milky Way's structural parameters to other, primarily edge-on, spiral galaxies in order to…
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with physical properties inferred from various tracers informed by the extrapolation of structures seen in other galaxies. However, the distances of these tracers are measured indirectly and are…