A substructure inside spiral arms, and a mirror image across the Galactic Meridian [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08871


While the galactic density wave theory is over 50 years old and well known in science, whether it fits our own Milky Way disk has been difficult to say. Here we show a substructure inside the spiral arms. This substructure is reversing with respect to the Galactic Meridian (longitude zero), and crosscuts of the arms at negative longitudes appear as mirror images of crosscuts of the arms at positive longitudes. Four lanes are delineated: mid-arm (extended 12CO gas at mid arm, HI atoms), in-between offset by about 100 pc (synchrotron, radio recombination lines), in between offset by about 200 pc (masers, colder dust), and inner edge (hotter dust seen in Mid-IR and Near-IR).

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Vallee
Wed, 30 Mar 16
36/48

Comments: 25 pages, 2 figures, 10 tables, 1 appendix, accepted 13 February 2016 by Astrophysical Journal (in press)