Bibcode
López-Corredoira, M.; Molgó, J.
Referencia bibliográfica
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 567, id.A106, 8 pp.
Fecha de publicación:
7
2014
Revista
Número de citas
71
Número de citas referidas
68
Descripción
Aims: We explore the outer Galactic disc up to a Galactocentric
distance of ≈30 kpc to derive its parameters and measure the
magnitude of its flare. Methods: We obtained the 3D density of
stars of type F8V-G5V with a colour selection from extinction-corrected
photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - Sloan Extension for
Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SDSS-SEGUE) over 1400
deg2 in off-plane low Galactic latitude regions and fitted it
to a model of flared thin+thick disc. Results: The best-fit
parameters are a thin-disc scale length of 2.0 kpc, a thin-disc scale
height at solar Galactocentric distance of 0.24 kpc, a thick-disc scale
length of 2.5 kpc, and a thick-disc scale height at solar Galactocentric
distance of 0.71 kpc. We derive a flaring in both discs that causes the
scale height of the average disc to be multiplied with respect to the
solar neighbourhood value by a factor of
3.3+2.2-1.6 at R = 15 kpc and by a factor of
12+20-7 at R = 25 kpc. Conclusions: The
flare is quite prominent at large R and its presence explains the
apparent depletion of in-plane stars that are often confused with a
cut-off at R ≳ 15 kpc. Indeed, our Galactic disc does not present a
truncation or abrupt fall-off there, but the stars are spread in
off-plane regions, even at z of several kpc for R ≳ 20 kpc.
Moreover, the smoothness of the observed stellar distribution also
suggests that there is a continuous structure and not a combination of a
Galactic disc plus some other substructure or extragalactic component:
the hypothesis to interpret the Monoceros ring in terms of a tidal
stream of a putative accreted dwarf galaxy is not only unnecessary
because the observed flare explains the overdensity in the Monoceros
ring observed in SDSS fields, but it appears to be inappropriate.
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Martín
López Corredoira