2005/12/08 by Y. Xu, Ye Xu, M. J. Reid +3 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1120914
published as Science 311:54,2006 · 19 pages, 4 figures, Science Express December 8, 2005
arxiv created 2005/12/08 · openalex publication_date 2005/12/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We have measured the distance to the massive star-forming region W3OH in the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way to be 1.95 +/- 0.04 kiloparsecs (5.86 x10(16) km). This distance was determined by triangulation, with Earth's orbit as one segment of a triangle, using the Very Long Baseline Array. This resolves the long-standing problem that there is a discrepancy of a factor of 2 between different techniques used to determine distances. The reason for the discrepancy is that this portion of the Perseus arm has anomalous motions. The orientation of the anomalous motion agrees with spiral density-wave theory, but the magnitude of the motion is somewhat larger than most models predict.