Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Drimmel, Ronald, Khanna, Shourya, Poggio, Eloisa, Skowron, Dorota M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.09127
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912447501172736
author Drimmel, Ronald
Khanna, Shourya
Poggio, Eloisa
Skowron, Dorota M.
author_facet Drimmel, Ronald
Khanna, Shourya
Poggio, Eloisa
Skowron, Dorota M.
contents 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 distances derived in Paper I based on mid-IR WISE photometry for a selected sample of 2857 dynamically young Cepheids to trace the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The Perseus and Sagittarius-Carina arms are clearly evident in the third and fourth Galactic quadrants, while the Local and Scutum arms are much weaker, and extinction severely limits our view of the latter innermost spiral arm. Pitch angles were derived for each arm over various ranges of Galactic azimuth, each covering at least 90deg in azimuth. Our method of detecting spiral arms and deriving pitch angles does not rely on pre-assigning sources to specific arms. While the spiral structure in the first and second quadrant is not obvious in part because of extinction effects, it is not inconsistent with the structure seen in the third and fourth quadrants. In summary, the Cepheids allow us to map spiral structure in the third and fourth Galactic quadrants where currently few masers have astrometric parallaxes, significantly extending our understanding of the Milky Way at large scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_09127
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Milky Way as Seen by Classical Cepheids II: Spiral Structure
Drimmel, Ronald
Khanna, Shourya
Poggio, Eloisa
Skowron, Dorota M.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
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 distances derived in Paper I based on mid-IR WISE photometry for a selected sample of 2857 dynamically young Cepheids to trace the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The Perseus and Sagittarius-Carina arms are clearly evident in the third and fourth Galactic quadrants, while the Local and Scutum arms are much weaker, and extinction severely limits our view of the latter innermost spiral arm. Pitch angles were derived for each arm over various ranges of Galactic azimuth, each covering at least 90deg in azimuth. Our method of detecting spiral arms and deriving pitch angles does not rely on pre-assigning sources to specific arms. While the spiral structure in the first and second quadrant is not obvious in part because of extinction effects, it is not inconsistent with the structure seen in the third and fourth quadrants. In summary, the Cepheids allow us to map spiral structure in the third and fourth Galactic quadrants where currently few masers have astrometric parallaxes, significantly extending our understanding of the Milky Way at large scales.
title The Milky Way as Seen by Classical Cepheids II: Spiral Structure
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.09127