Abstract
The spiral structure in the solar neighborhood is an important issue in astronomy. In the past few years, there has been significant progress in observation. The distances for a large number of good spiral tracers, i.e., giant molecular clouds, high-mass star-formation region masers, HII regions, O-type stars, and young open clusters, have been accurately estimated, making it possible to depict the detailed properties of nearby spiral arms. In this work, we first give an overview about the research status for the Galaxy’s spiral structure based on different types of tracers. Then the objects with distance uncertainties better than 15% and <0.5 kpc are collected and combined together to depict the spiral structure in the solar neighborhood. Five segments related with the Perseus, Local, Sagittarius-Carina, Scutum-Centaurus, and Norma arms are traced. With the large dataset, the parameters of the nearby arm segments are fitted and updated. Besides the dominant spiral arms, some substructures probably related to arm spurs or feathers are also noticed and discussed.
Highlights
As observers deeply embedded in the Galactic disk, mapping the spiral structure of the Milky Way and understanding its formation and evolution have long been difficult issues in astronomy
We focus on the solar neighborhood, where the spiral structure can be better understood, because the distances of a large number of nearby objects can be measured accurately
In order to better reveal the properties of spiral structure in the solar neighborhood, we combine the data of good tracers of gas arms, i.e., giant molecular clouds (GMCs), high-mass star-formation region (HMSFR) masers, HII regions, O-type stars, and young OCs
Summary
As observers deeply embedded in the Galactic disk, mapping the spiral structure of the Milky Way and understanding its formation and evolution have long been difficult issues in astronomy. The picture of the Galaxy’s spiral structure was extended by taking advantage of more observational data of different types of spiral tracers e.g., HII regions (e.g., Downes et al, 1980; Caswell and Haynes, 1987; Russeil, 2003; Paladini et al, 2004), molecular clouds (e.g., Cohen et al, 1980, 1985; Hou et al, 2009; Lépine et al, 2011), neutral atomic gas (Simonson, 1970; Burton, 1973; Levine et al, 2006; Koo et al, 2017), high-mass star-formation region (HMSFR) masers (e.g., Xu et al, 2006; Reid et al, 2009), OB stars (e.g., Miller, 1972; Stothers and Frogel, 1974; de Zeeuw et al, 1999; Wright, 2020), open clusters (e.g., Becker, 1964; Becker and Fenkart, 1970; Janes et al, 1988; Dias and Lépine, 2005), and cepheids (e.g., Fernie, 1968; Majaess et al, 2009) These great efforts enhanced our understanding of the global properties of the Galaxy’s spiral structure.
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