VERA astrometry toward the Perseus arm gap

TL;DR

This study uses VERA astrometry and archival H I data to investigate the Perseus arm gap, revealing star-forming regions, noncircular motions, and possible cloud collision effects in the Galactic disk.

Contribution

First precise parallaxes and proper motions for regions in the Perseus arm gap, linking H I structures to star formation and Galactic dynamics.

Findings

Measured parallaxes for four star-forming regions.

Identified noncircular motions in Perseus arm sources.

Detected H I holes and arc structures related to cloud collision.

Abstract

The Perseus arm has a gap in Galactic longitudes (l) between 50 and 80 deg (hereafter the Perseus arm gap) where the arm has little star formation activity. To better understand the gap, we conducted astrometric observations with VERA and analyzed archival H I data. We report on parallax and proper motion results from four star-forming regions, of which G050.28-00.39 and G070.33+01.59 are likely associated with the gap. The measured parallaxes are 0.140+/-0.018 (mas), 0.726+/-0.038 (mas), 0.074+/-0.037 (mas), and 0.118+/-0.035 (mas) for G050.28-00.39, G053.14+00.07, G070.33+01.59, and G079.08+01.33, respectively. Since the fractional parallax error of G070.33+01.59 is large (0.5), we estimated a 3D kinematic distance of the source to be 7.7+/-1.0 kpc using both the LSR velocity (VLSR) and the measured proper motion. Perseus-arm sources G049.41+00.32 and G050.28-00.39 lag relative to a Galactic rotation by 77+/-17 km/s and 31+/-10 km/s, respectively. The noncircular motion of G049.41+00.32 cannot be explained by the gravitational potential of the Perseus arm. We discovered rectangular holes with integrated brightness temperatures of < 30 K arcdeg in l vs. VLSR of the H I data. One of the holes is centered near (l, VLSR) = (47 deg, -15 km/s), and G049.41+00.32 is associated with the rim of the hole. However, G050.28-00.39 is not associated with the hole. We found extended H I emission on one side of the Galactic plane when integrating the H I data over the velocity range covering the hole (i.e., VLSR = [-25, -5] km/s). G049.41+00.32 and G050.28-00.39 are moving toward the emission. The Galactic H I disk at the same velocity range showed an arc structure, indicating that the disk was pushed from the lower side of the disk. All the observational results might be explained by a cloud collision with the Galactic disk.