The Distance to the Perseus Spiral Arm in the Milky Way | Zendy

Ye Xu | Zendy; M. J. Reid | Zendy; X. W. Zheng | Zendy; K. M. Menten | Zendy

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The Distance to the Perseus Spiral Arm in the Milky Way

Author(s) -

Ye Xu,

M. J. Reid,

X. W. Zheng,

K. M. Menten

Publication year - 2005

Publication title -

science

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 12.556

H-Index - 1186

eISSN - 1095-9203

pISSN - 0036-8075

DOI - 10.1126/science.1120914

Subject(s) - milky way , spiral (railway) , physics , spiral galaxy , proper motion , very long baseline array , triangulation , astrophysics , orbit (dynamics) , orientation (vector space) , motion (physics) , astronomy , cover (algebra) , geodesy , geometry , geology , galaxy , classical mechanics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , stars , active galactic nucleus , engineering , aerospace engineering , mechanical engineering

We have measured the distance to the massive star-forming region W3OH in the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way to be 1.95 +/- 0.04 kiloparsecs (5.86 x10(16) km). This distance was determined by triangulation, with Earth's orbit as one segment of a triangle, using the Very Long Baseline Array. This resolves the long-standing problem that there is a discrepancy of a factor of 2 between different techniques used to determine distances. The reason for the discrepancy is that this portion of the Perseus arm has anomalous motions. The orientation of the anomalous motion agrees with spiral density-wave theory, but the magnitude of the motion is somewhat larger than most models predict.

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