The distance to a star forming region in the Outer arm of the Galaxy

TL;DR

This study precisely measures the distance to a star-forming region in the Galaxy's Outer arm using VLBA astrometry, revealing a closer distance than previously estimated and supporting the existence of dark matter through rotation curve analysis.

Contribution

It provides a highly accurate parallax measurement of WB89-437, confirming the Outer arm's location and its kinematic properties, and offers insights into Galactic rotation and dark matter presence.

Findings

Distance to WB89-437 is 6.0 kpc, smaller than previous estimates.

WB89-437 has a peculiar motion of ~20 km/s toward the Galactic center.

Supports a flat Galactic rotation curve indicating dark matter presence.

Abstract

We performed astrometric observations with the VLBA of WB89-437, an H2O maser source in the Outer spiral arm of the Galaxy. We measure an annual parallax of 0.167 +/- 0.006 mas, corresponding to a heliocentric distance of 6.0 +/- 0.2 kpc or a Galactocentric distance of 13.4 +/- 0.2 kpc. This value for the heliocentric distance is considerably smaller than the kinematic distance of 8.6 kpc. This confirms the presence of a faint Outer arm toward l = 135 degrees. We also measured the full space motion of the object and find a large peculiar motion of ~20 km/s toward the Galactic center. This peculiar motion explains the large error in the kinematic distance estimate. We also find that WB89-437 has the same rotation speed as the LSR, providing more evidence for a flat rotation curve and thus the presence of dark matter in the outer Galaxy.