The Edge of the Milky Way Stellar Disk Revealed Using Clump Giant Stars as Distance Indicators

Abstract

We use the clump giants of the disk as standard candles calibrated from Hipparcos parallaxes in order to map their distribution with two new near-IR surveys of the Galactic plane: UKIDSS-GPS and VVV. We explore different selection cuts of clump giants. We conclude that there is an edge of the stellar disk of the Milky Way at R=13.9+/-0.5kpc along various lines of sight across the galaxy. The effect of the warp is considered, taking fields at different longitudes and above and below the plane. We demonstrate that the edge of the stellar disk of the Milky Way can now be mapped in the near infrared in order to test different models, and to establish our own place within the galaxy.

References in corpus (3)

• The UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey
• Outer structure of the Galactic warp and flare: explaining the Canis Major over-density
• Truncations of stellar disk and warps of HI-layers in edge-on spiral galaxies

Cited by in corpus (18)

• LAMOST Spectroscopic Survey of the Galactic Anti-centre (LSS-GAC): target selection and the first release of value-added catalogues
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Galactic anticentre
• Flare in the Galactic stellar outer disc detected in SDSS-SEGUE data
• Milky Way demographics with the VVV survey. I. The 84-million star colour-magnitude diagram of the Galactic bulge
• Partly burnt runaway stellar remnants from peculiar thermonuclear supernovae
• Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way
• Recent Star Formation in the Leading Arm of the Magellanic Stream
• Structure of the outer Galactic disc with Gaia-DR2
• Hidden in the Haystack: Low-luminosity globular clusters towards the Milky Way bulge
• Discovery of a mid-infrared protostellar outburst of exceptional amplitude
• The structure of the Milky Way based on unWISE 3.4$\mu$m integrated photometry
• On the Galactic rotation curve inferred from the Jeans equations Assessing its robustness using Gaia DR3 and cosmological simulations
• Searching for Milky Way twins: Radial abundance distribution as a strict criterion
• Clustered Cepheid Variables 90 kiloparsec from the Galactic Center
• Deep PSF photometric catalog of the VVV survey data
• The Sagittarius stellar stream embedded in a fermionic dark matter halo
• Evidence of distant spiral arms in the Galactic disk quadrant IV from VVV red clump giants
• Mapping the Milky Way with Gaia Bp/Rp spectra-IV: the broken and asymmetric density profile of the stellar disk traced by a large sample of red clumps