The Incredible Shrinking Milky Way

Details The Incredible Shrinking Milky Way The Incredible Shrinking Milky Way

Feb 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007noao.prop..129b&link_type=abstract

NOAO Proposal ID #2007A-0129

Physics

Scientific paper

We propose to obtain near infrared spectra of OB stars embedded in Galactic giant HII regions (GHII) in order to trace the spiral structure of our Galaxy. Our distance determinations are based upon spectroscopic parallaxes of newly born OB stars. Radio recombination line+rotation models suffer from the classic near--far ambiguity which our method resolves. However, initial results show that even the near distances are systematically overestimated by kinematic techniques. Our spectroscopic distances to embedded clusters in GHII present a serious problem for models of the Milky Way that use radio recombination line distances to trace spiral structure and suggest that fundamental characteristics of the Galaxy such as Lyman continuum and mechanical input to the interstellar medium as well as the global star formation rate are still very uncertain. Give us time and we will fix this.

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