Galactic structure in the outer disk: the field in the line of sight to the intermediate-age open cluster Tombaugh 1

TL;DR

This study uses optical photometry and spectroscopy to analyze the stellar populations in the direction of Tombaugh 1, revealing a complex mixture of young and old Galactic thin disk stars, and providing insights into the Galaxy's spiral structure and disk warp.

Contribution

First spectroscopic confirmation of early-type stars in the blue plume, linking them to the outer spiral arm and challenging existing Galactic disk models.

Findings

Young stars crowd at 6.6-8.2 kpc, tracing the outer arm.

Old population consistent with the Galactic thin disk.

Warped disk affects line-of-sight and spiral arm visibility.

Abstract

We employ optical photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy to study a field toward the open cluster Tombaugh 1, where we identify a complex population mixture, that we describe in terms of young and old Galactic thin disk. Of particular interest is the spatial distribution of the young population, which consists of dwarfs with spectral type as early as B6, and distribute in a {\it blue plume} feature in the colour-magnitude diagram. For the first time we confirm spectroscopically that most of these stars are early type stars, and not blue stragglers nor halo/thick disk sub-dwarfs. Moreover, they are not evenly distributed along the line of sight, but crowd at heliocentric distances between 6.6 and 8.2 kpc. We compare these results with present-day understanding of the spiral structure of the Galaxy and suggest that they traces the outer arm. This range in distances challenges current Galactic models adopting a disk cut-off at 14 kpc from the Galactic center. The young dwarfs overlap in space with an older component which identifies the old Galactic thin disk. Both young and old populations are confined in space since the disk is warped at the latitude and longitude of Tombaugh~1. The main effects of the warp are that the line of sight intersects the disk and entirely crosses it at the outer arm distance, and that there are no traces of the closer Perseus arm, which would then be either un-important in this sector, or located much closer to the formal Galactic plane. We finally analysed a group of giant stars, which turn out to be located at very different distances, and to possess very different chemical properties, with no obvious relation with the other populations.