A New Spiral Arm of the Galaxy: The Far 3-Kpc Arm

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a symmetric far-side counterpart to the known 3-Kpc Arm in the Galaxy, supporting the existence of a central bar and providing detailed measurements of its properties.

Contribution

The first detection and characterization of the far-side 3-Kpc Arm, confirming its symmetry with the near arm and supporting the galactic bar hypothesis.

Findings

Far 3-Kpc Arm is symmetric with the Near Arm in velocity and structure.

Both arms are predominantly molecular with similar physical properties.

Detection supports the existence of a central galactic bar.

Abstract

We report the detection in CO of the far-side counterpart of the well-known expanding 3-Kpc Arm in the central region of the Galaxy. In a CO longitude-velocity map at b = 0 deg the Far 3-Kpc Arm can be followed over at least 20 deg of Galactic longitude as a faint lane at positive velocities running parallel to the Near Arm. The Far Arm crosses l = 0 deg at +56 km/s, quite symmetric with the -53 km/s expansion velocity of the Near Arm. In addition to their symmetry in longitude and velocity, we find that the two arms have linewidths (~21 km/s), linear scale heights (~103 pc FWHM), and H2 masses per unit length (~4.3 x 10^6 Mo/kpc) that agree to 26% or better. Guided by the CO, we have also identified the Far Arm in high-resolution 21 cm data and find, subject to the poorly known CO-to-H2 ratio in these objects, that both arms are predominately molecular by a factor of 3-4. The detection of these symmetric expanding arms provides strong support for the existence of a bar at the center of our Galaxy and should allow better determination of the bar's physical properties.