English

What Does the Milky Way Look Like?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-04-24 v1

Abstract

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 locations of very young objects, for the first time, we propose that our galaxy has a multiple-arm morphology that consists of two-arm symmetry (the Perseus and Norma Arms) in the inner parts and that extends to the outer parts, where there are several long, irregular arms (the Centaurus, Sagittarius, Carina, Outer, and Local Arms).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.10690,
  title  = {What Does the Milky Way Look Like?},
  author = {Y. Xu and C. J. Hao and D. J. Liu and Z. H. Lin and S. B. Bian and L. G. Hou and J. J. Li and Y. J. Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.10690},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages, 9 figures, ApJ, 947, 54

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:13:12.381Z