Perseus arm – a new perspective on star formation and spiral structure in our home galaxy

ABSTRACT Expansion of (sub)millimetre capabilities to high angular resolution offered with interferometers allows resolve giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in nearby galaxies. This enables us place the Milky Way context other galaxies advance our understanding star formation own Galaxy. We, thus, remap 12CO (1–0) data along Perseus spiral arm outer a fixed physical and present first cube at common distance as it would be seen by an observer outside Way. To achieve this goal, we calibrated longitude–velocity structure gas based on trigonometric distances maser velocities provided BeSSeL survey. The were convolved same spatial whole regridded linear scale map coordinate system transformed reference frame. We determined width 7.8 ± 0.2 km s−1 around kinematic centre. study large-scale structure, derived mass surface density distribution velocities, shifted centre, length. yields variation length compression scale. thickness ∼63 pc average for centroid layer 8.7 pc.