The distances to molecular clouds in the fourth Galactic quadrant

TL;DR

This paper provides direct distance measurements to 169 molecular clouds in the Milky Way's fourth quadrant using near-infrared data, improving the accuracy of galactic structure models.

Contribution

It presents a large, homogeneous catalogue of molecular cloud distances with high precision, derived from red clump star extinction profiles.

Findings

Distances range from 2 to 11 kpc from the Sun.

Internal uncertainties are less than 5%, systematic about 7%.

The catalogue enables testing of spiral arm models.

Abstract

Distance measurements to molecular clouds are essential and important. We present directly measured distances to 169 molecular clouds in the fourth quadrant of the Milky Way. Based on the near-infrared photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey and the Vista Variables in the Via Lactea Survey, we select red clump stars in the overlapping directions of the individual molecular clouds and infer the bin averaged extinction values and distances to these stars. We track the extinction versus distance profiles of the sightlines toward the clouds and fit them with Gaussian dust distribution models to find the distances to the clouds. We have obtained distances to 169 molecular clouds selected from Rice et al. The clouds range in distances between 2 and 11 kpc from the Sun. The typical internal uncertainties in the distances are less than 5 per cent and the systematic uncertainty is about 7 per cent. The catalogue presented in this work is one of the largest homogeneous catalogues of distant molecular clouds with the direct measurement of distances. Based on the catalogue, we have tested different spiral arm models from the literature.