paper

Median Statistics Estimate of the Distance to the Galactic Center

arXiv:1708.01310 · doi:10.1088/1538-3873/aa9b26

Abstract

We show that error distributions of a compilation of 28 recent independent measurements of the distance from the Sun to the Galactic center, $R_{0}$ , are wider than a standard Gaussian and best fit by an $n = 4$ Student's $t$ probability density function. Given this non-Gaussianity, the results of our median statistics analysis, summarized as $R_{0} = 8.0 \pm 0.3$ kpc ( $2 I ¨ $ error), probably provides the most reliable estimate of $R_{0}$ .

12 pages. V2 has additional discussions on measurement independence and now includes an appendix to derive a more appropriate error distribution for weighted mean statistics analysis, but conclusion is unchanged. Accepted to PASP