High Galactic latitude runaway stars as tracers of the spiral arms

Abstract

A direct observation of the spiral structure of the Galaxy is hindered by our position in the middle of the Galactic plane. We propose a method based on the analysis of the birthplaces of high Galactic latitude runaway stars to map the spiral arms and determine their dynamics. As a proof of concept, the method is applied to a local sample of early-type stars and a sample of runaways stars to obtain estimates of the pattern speed and the spiral arm's phase angle. We also estimate the performance of this method once the data gathered by Gaia, in particular for runaway stars observed on the other side of the Galaxy, is available.

9 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• A new method for estimating the pattern speed of spiral structure in the Milky Way
• Red Runaways: Hypervelocity Stars, Hills Ejecta and Other Outliers in the F-M Star Regime
• Offsets of masers with respect to the middle of the Perseus arm, and the co-rotation radius in the Milky Way
• Determination of the Spiral Pattern Speed in the Galaxy from Three Samples of Stars
• The Spiral Pattern Speed in the Milky Way Galaxy