Milky Way Rotation Models from Neutral Hydrogen and Molecular Clouds: Galactic Constants, Common Details and Differences

Abstract

Kinematic data from neutral hydrogen observations provide information to solve the interdependent problems of the determination of the main Galactic constants (the Solar-Galactic center distance R0, the Oort constant A and others) and the Galactic rotation curve (Nikiforov & Petrovskaya 1994, hereafter NP94, and references therein). However, in the standard method for finding R0 by comparing the rotations of HI clouds and some other objects (typically HII regions/CO clouds), the kinematic model, constructed typically solely from HI data, is considered to be the same for both galactic subsystems (e.g. Merrifield 1992). In practice a discrepancy between their rotation curves can produce strongly erroneous results (Merrifield 1992, NP94). Establishing the common rotation law from HI plus HII/CO data in NP94 is only a part of attacking the problem.