Study of the structure and kinematics of the Galaxy according to VLBI astrometry of masers and radio stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent high-precision VLBI astrometry of masers and radio stars, revealing detailed insights into the Galaxy's structure and kinematics, and presents new results from the authors' own analyses.

Contribution

It provides an overview of VLBI-based measurements of Galactic structure and kinematics, highlighting new findings from the authors' recent observations.

Findings

High-accuracy parallaxes enable detailed Galactic mapping

VLBI observations reveal star distribution and motion patterns

Authors present new kinematic models of the Galaxy

Abstract

In recent years, radio interferometric observations have achieved high accuracy in determining the absolute values of trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of maser radiation sources and radio stars. The error in determining the trigonometric parallaxes of these objects averages about 10 microarcseconds, which allows us to confidently study the geometric and kinematic properties of the distribution of stars located at great distances from the Sun, up to the center of the Galaxy. This article provides an overview of the main results of studying the structure and kinematics of the Galaxy, which were obtained by various scientific teams using VLBI observations of masers and radio stars. The main attention is paid to the results of studying the Galaxy obtained by the authors of this work.