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Structure in the Milky Way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2018

Trey V. Wenger
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400325, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325, USA National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475, USA
Dana S. Balser
Affiliation:
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475, USA
L. D. Anderson
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
T. M. Bania
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, Boston University, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
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Abstract

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The morphological and chemical structure of the Milky Way today is an important constraint on models of the formation and evolution of the Galaxy. We use H ii regions, the sites of recent massive star formation, to probe both the Galactic spiral structure and the Galactic metallicity structure. H ii regions are the brightest objects in the Galaxy at radio wavelengths and are detected across the entire Galactic disk. We derive the distances to H ii regions using parallax measurements or by deriving kinematic distances. Here we summarize ongoing work to assess the accuracy of kinematic distances and to complete the census of Galactic H ii regions in the Southern sky.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2018 

References

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