Different studies of the global pitch angle of the Milky Way's spiral arms

Abstract

There are many published values for the pitch angle of individual spiral arms, and their wide distribution (from -3 to -28 degrees) begs for various attempts for a single value. Each of the four statistical methods used here yields a mean pitch angle in a small range, between -12 and -14 degrees (table 7, figure 2). The final result of our meta-analysis yields a mean global pitch angle in the Milky Way's spiral arms of -13.1 degrees, plus or minus 0.6 degree.

18 pages; 2 figures, 7 tables, 1 appendix; accepted on 2015 April 14, by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (in press)

References in corpus (29)

• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star Forming Regions: VI. Galactic Structure, Fundamental Parameters and Non-Circular Motions
• The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way
• ATLASGAL --- towards a complete sample of massive star forming clumps
• The Bones of the Milky Way
• Trigonometric parallaxes of star forming regions in the Sagittarius spiral arm
• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Perseus Spiral Arm
• A 3D extinction map of the Northern Galactic Plane based on IPHAS photometry
• Mapping the Milky Way bulge at high resolution: the 3D dust extinction, CO, and X factor maps
• Magnetic Fields in the Milky Way
• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Scutum Spiral Arm
• A Possible Extension of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm into the Outer Second Quadrant
• The origin of the high-velocity cloud complex C
• Age, size, and position of H ii regions in the Galaxy. Expansion of ionized gas in turbulent molecular clouds
• The morphology of the Milky Way - I. Reconstructing CO maps from simulations in fixed potentials
• Catalog of observed tangents to the spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy
• Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way
• The Milky Way Project: Leveraging Citizen Science and Machine Learning to Detect Interstellar Bubbles
• Characteristics of Spiral Arms in Late-type Galaxies
• Spiral Arms as Cosmic Ray Source Distributions
• Origin and z-distribution of Galactic diffuse [CII] emission
• Synthetic CO, H2 and HI surveys of the Galactic 2nd Quadrant, and the properties of molecular gas
• The thickening of the thin disk in the third Galactic quadrant
• The Gould Belt, the de Vaucouleurs-Dolidze Belt, and the Orion Arm
• Trigonometric Distance and Proper Motion of IRAS 20056+3350: Massive Star Forming Region on the Solar Circle
• A deep and wide-field view at the IC 2944 / 2948 complex in Centaurus
• Structure and Dynamics of the Milky Way: The Evolving Picture
• Trigonometric Parallax of IRAS 22555+6213 with VERA: 3-Dimensional View of Sources Along the Same Line of Sight
• The pros and cons of the inversion method approach to derive 3D dust emission properties of the ISM: the Hi-GAL field centred on (l,b)=(30${}^{\circ }$,0${}^{\circ }$)
• A CO observation of the galactic methanol masers

Cited by in corpus (39)

• Three-Dimensional Distribution of the ISM in the Milky Way Galaxy: III. The Total Neutral Gas Disk
• Transient spiral structure and the disc velocity substructure in Gaia DR2
• Signatures of resonance and phase mixing in the Galactic disc
• A Census of Large-Scale ($\ge$ 10 pc), Velocity-Coherent, Dense Filaments in the Northern Galactic Plane: Automated Identification Using Minimum Spanning Tree
• Updating the (Supermassive Black Hole Mass) - (Spiral Arm Pitch Angle) Relation: A Strong Correlation for Galaxies with Pseudobulges
• Offset between stellar spiral arms and gas arms of the Milky Way
• Galactic masers: kinematics, spiral structure and the disk dynamic state
• A guided map to the Spiral arms in the galactic disk of the Milky Way
• Tracing the Spiral Structure of the Outer Milky Way with Dense Atomic Hydrogen Gas
• The start of the Sagittarius spiral arm (Sagittarius origin) and the start of the Norma spiral arm (Norma origin) - model-computed and observed arm tangents at galactic longitudes -20 degrees < l < +23 degrees
• Into the Darkness: Classical and Type II Cepheids in the Zona Galactica Incognita
• Constraining the pitch angle of the Galactic spiral arms in the Milky Way
• The dynamical origin of the Local arm and the Sun's trapped orbit
• A substructure inside spiral arms, and a mirror image across the Galactic Meridian
• An Outer Arm in the Second Galactic Quadrant: Structure
• Galaxy Zoo Builder: Morphological Dependence of Spiral Galaxy Pitch Angle
• The Norma spiral arm: large-scale pitch angle
• Interstellar Polarization Survey III: Relation Between Optical Polarization and Reddening in the General Interstellar Medium
• Segments of spiral arms of the Galaxy traced by classical Cepheids: Effects of age heterogeneity
• Synthetic observations of spiral arm tracers of a simulated Milky Way analog
• Galactic resonance rings. Modelling of motions in the wide solar neighborhood
• Catalog of spiral arm Tangents (Galactic Longitudes) in the Milky Way, and the Age Gradient based on various arm tangents
• A low density-wave spiral pattern speed, from the tracer separations (age gradient) across a spiral arm in the Milky Way
• Open clusters in AurOB2
• A New Multi-Tracer Approach to Defining the Spiral arm width in the Milky Way
• A deep near-infrared spectroscopic survey of the Scutum-Crux arm for Wolf-Rayet stars
• Spatial and velocity offsets of Galactic masers from the centers of spiral arms
• Discovery of a Planar Black Hole Mass Scaling Relation for Spiral Galaxies
• Galactic Kinematics from Data on Open Star Clusters from the MWSC Catalogue
• The Observed Age Gradient in the Milky Way -- as a Test for theories of spiral arm structure
• Kinematic structure of the Milky Way galaxy, near the spiral arm tangents
• On the many '3-kiloparsec arms' - shocked wave and nuclear rotation
• Arm Tangents and the spiral structure of the Milky Way ; the Age Gradient
• Interarm islands in the Milky Way -- the one near the Cygnus spiral arm
• A New Search for Star Forming Regions in the Southern Outer Galaxy
• Superposing the Magnetic spiral structure of the Milky Way, on the stellar spiral arms -- Matching the unique galactic magnetic field reversal Zone with two galactic spiral arm Segments
• Distances of Galactic Radio Pulsars; First Quadrant: $-2^{\circ }<\ell <90^{\circ }$ and $-2^{\circ }<b<2^{\circ }$
• Comparing the structural parameters of the Milky Way to other spiral galaxies
• Spatial offsets between interstellar bone-like filaments, radio masers, and cold diffuse CO gas, in the Scutum spiral arm