A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disk

Abstract

We present a large, homogeneous catalogue of molecular clouds within 4 kpc from the Sun at low Galactic latitudes ($|b|$ $<$ 10\degr) with unprecedented accurate distance determinations. Based on the three-dimensional dust reddening map and estimates of colour excesses and distances of over 32 million stars presented in Chen et al, we have identified 567 dust/molecular clouds with a hierarchical structure identification method and obtained their distance estimates by a dust model fitting algorithm. The typical distance uncertainty is less than 5 per cent. As far as we know, this is the first large catalogue of molecular clouds in the Galactic plane with distances derived in a direct manner. The clouds are seen to lie along the Sagittarius, Local and Perseus Arms. In addition to the known structures, we propose the existence of a possible {\it spur}, with a pitch angle of about 34\degr, connecting the Local and the Sagittarius Arms in the fourth quadrant. We have also derived the physical properties of those molecular clouds. The distribution of cloud properties in different parameter spaces agrees grossly with the previous results. Our cloud sample is an ideal starting point to study the concentration of dust and gas in the solar vicinity and their star formation activities.

arXiv comment11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, MNRAS in press

References in corpus (35)

• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
• The Milky Way in Molecular Clouds: A New Complete CO Survey
• Gaia Data Release 2: The astrometric solution
• Estimating distances from parallaxes IV: Distances to 1.33 billion stars in Gaia Data Release 2
• Structural Analysis of Molecular Clouds: Dendrograms
• A Three-Dimensional Map of Milky-Way Dust
• Physical properties of molecular clouds for the entire Milky Way disk
• Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc
• Physical Properties and Galactic Distribution of Molecular Clouds identified in the Galactic Ring Survey
• A Large Catalog of Accurate Distances to Local Molecular Clouds: The Gaia DR2 Edition
• Kinematic Distances to Molecular Clouds identified in the Galactic Ring Survey
• 2MASS wide field extinction maps - I. The Pipe nebula
• The "True" Column Density Distribution in Star-Forming Molecular Clouds
• A Large Catalog of Accurate Distances to Molecular Clouds from PS1 Photometry
• Three-dimensional interstellar dust reddening maps of the Galactic plane
• Large-scale filaments associated with Milky Way spiral arms
• The Bones of the Milky Way
• The California Molecular Cloud
• ATLASGAL -- A Galaxy-wide sample of dense filamentary structures
• The local spiral structure of the Milky Way
• Giant molecular clouds and massive star formation in the southern milky way
• The spiral structure of the Milky Way
• A three dimensional extinction map of the Galactic Anticentre from multi-band photometry
• A 500 pc filamentary gas wisp in the disk of the Milky Way
• 2MASS wide field extinction maps: IV. The Orion, Mon R2, Rosette, and Canis Major star forming regions
• The Galactic spiral structure as revealed by O- and early B-type stars
• The Distances to Molecular Clouds at High Galactic Latitudes based on GAIA DR2
• Multiple CO Outflows in Circinus: The Churning of a Molecular Cloud
• Distribution and characteristics of Infrared Dark Clouds using genetic forward modelling
• 3D Dust Mapping Reveals that Orion Forms Part of a Large Ring of Dust
• Dust-to-gas ratio, $X_{\mathrm{CO}}$ factor and CO-dark gas in the Galactic anticentre: an observational study
• Three dimensional dust mapping of 12 supernovae remnants in the Galactic anticentre
• Mapping the three-dimensional dust extinction toward the supernova remnant S147 - the S147 dust cloud
• An Unbiased Survey for Molecular Clouds in the Southern Galactic Warp

Cited by in corpus (40)

• Updated Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust
• On the Three-Dimensional Structure of Local Molecular Clouds
• Overview of the LAMOST survey in the first decade
• Mapping Luminous Hot Stars in the Galaxy
• The Mass-Size Relation and the Constancy of GMC Surface Densities in the Milky Way
• Three-Dimensional Distribution of the Interstellar Dust in the Milky Way
• ALMA-IRDC: Dense gas mass distribution from cloud to core scales
• The spiral structure in the Solar neighborhood
• Hierarchical Clustering in Astronomy
• Distances to molecular clouds in the second Galactic quadrant
• Effective Shielding of $\lesssim$ 10 GeV Cosmic Rays from Dense Molecular Clumps
• Kinematics of the molecular interstellar medium probed by Gaia: steep velocity dispersion-size relation, isotropic turbulence, and location-dependent energy dissipation
• Early Evolution and 3D Structure of Embedded Star Clusters
• Gas Column Density Distribution of Molecular Clouds in the Third Quadrant of the Milky Way
• The Extinction and Distance of the MBM Molecular Clouds at High Galactic Latitude
• A global view on star formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic plane survey VIII. Formaldehyde absorption in Cygnus~X
• Discovery of a coherent, wave-like velocity pattern for the Radcliffe Wave
• A Parsec-Scale Catalog of Molecular Clouds in the Solar Neighborhood Based on 3D Dust Mapping: Implications for the Mass-Size Relation
• Distances to nearby molecular clouds traced by young stars
• A global view on star formation: The GLOSTAR Galactic plane survey X. Galactic HII region catalog using radio recombination lines
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds in the southern sky
• Weather Forecast of the Milky Way: Shear and Stellar feedback determine the lives of Galactic-scale filaments
• Positron Excess from Cosmic Ray Interactions in Galactic Molecular Clouds
• FEDReD III : Unraveling the 3D structure of Vela
• Cloud properties across spatial scales in simulations of the interstellar medium
• The distances to molecular clouds in the fourth Galactic quadrant
• A mean density of $112M_{\odot }\mathrm{p}{\mathrm{c}}^{-3}$ for Central Molecular Zone clumps -- Evidences for shear-enabled pressure equilibrium in the Galactic Center
• The Solar System's passage through the Radcliffe wave during the middle Miocene
• New method for estimating molecular cloud distances based on Gaia, 2MASS, and the TRILEGAL galaxy model
• Dynamical Origin for the Collinder 132-Gulliver 21 Stream: A Mixture of three Co-Moving Populations with an Age Difference of 250 Myr
• A Comprehensive All-Sky Catalog of 3345 Molecular Clouds from Three-dimensional Dust Extinction
• Interaction between the Supernova Remnant W44 and the Infrared Dark Cloud G034.77-00.55: shock induced star formation?
• Understanding the Universal Dust Attenuation Scaling Relation of Star-Forming Galaxies
• A Three-Dimensional Analytical Model of the Interstellar Extinction within the Nearest Kiloparsec
• Catching a Milky Way open cluster in its last breath
• CU-JADE: A Method for Traversing Extinction Jumps along the Line of Sight
• The Correlation Between Dust and Gas Contents in Molecular Clouds
• The distances of 61 PGCCs in the Second Galactic Quadrant
• TeV-PeV Gamma-ray and Neutrino Emission in the Galactic Plane
• Systematic Investigation of Dust and Gaseous CO in 12 Nearby Molecular Clouds