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Evidence of distant spiral arms in the Galactic disk quadrant IV from VVV red clump giants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2022

R. Kammers Open the ORCID record for R. Kammers [Opens in a new window] ,
R. K. Saito ,
E. Botan ,
D. Minniti ,
J. Alonso-García ,
L. C. Smith  and
P. W. Lucas
R. Kammers*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Trindade 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
R. K. Saito
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Trindade 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
E. Botan
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Trindade 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Humanas e Sociais, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Res. Cidade Jardim, 78550-728, Sinop, MT, Brazil
D. Minniti
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofísica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Andres Bello, Av. Fernandez Concha 700, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile Vatican Observatory, V00120 Vatican City State, Italy
J. Alonso-García
Affiliation:
Centro de Astronomía (CITEVA), Universidad de Antofagasta, Av. Angamos 601, Antofagasta, Chile Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Nuncio Monseñor Sotero Sanz 100, Of. 104, Providencia, Santiago, Chile
L. C. Smith
Affiliation:
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
P. W. Lucas
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics Research, School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK
*
Corresponding author: R. Kammers, email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The discovery of new clear windows in the Galactic plane using the VVV near-IR extinction maps allows the study of the structure of the Milky Way (MW) disk. The ultimate goal of this work is to map the spiral arms in the far side of the MW, which is a relatively unexplored region of our Galaxy, using red clump (RC) giants as distance indicators. We search for near-IR clear windows located at low Galactic latitudes ( $|b|< 1$ deg) in the MW disk using the VVV near-IR extinction maps. We have identified two new windows named VVV WIN 1607–5258 and VVV WIN 1475–5877, respectively, that complement the previously known window VVV WIN 1713–3939. We analyse the distribution of RC stars in these three clear near-IR windows and measure their number density along the line of sight. This allows us to find overdensities in the distribution and measure their distances along the line of sight. We then use the VVV proper motions in order to measure the kinematics of the RC stars at different distances. We find enhancements in the distance distribution of RC giants in all the studied windows, interpreting them as the presence of spiral arms in the MW disk. These structures are absent in the current models of synthetic population for the same MW lines of sight. We were able to trace the end of the Galactic bar, the Norma arm, as well as the Scutum–Centaurus arm in the far disk. Using the VVV proper motions, we measure the kinematics for these Galactic features, confirming that they share the bulk rotation of the Galactic disk.

Keywords

Galaxy: diskGalaxy: structuredust, extinctionsurveys
Type
Research Article
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 39 , 2022 , e039
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Astronomical Society of Australia

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