Near Infrared Tomographs of the Galactic Plane

Calbet, X.; Mahoney, T.; Garzon, F.; Hammersley, P. L.
Referencia bibliográfica

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 276, NO. 1/SEP1, P. 301, 1995

Fecha de publicación:
9
1995
Número de autores
4
Número de autores del IAC
4
Número de citas
11
Número de citas referidas
9
Descripción
A new method of representing star count data is shown which has the advantage over traditional methods of giving clear insights into the luminosity functions and density distributions of certain stellar components of the Galaxy. When this method is applied to data from the Two-Micron Galactic Survey (TMGS) it is seen that the luminosity function of the spiral arms must have a significant and narrow peak at MK ≅ -7.6 mag, and that these stars are located within 90 pc perpendicular to the Galactic plane and at most 500 pc in the direction parallel to the plane, suggesting that these stars are located in the core of the spiral arms. Their density is roughly of the order of 1.4 × 10-5. The strong concentration of bright stars located within 500 pc of the Galactic Centre detected by the TMGS also shows a significant and narrow peak in its luminosity function at MK = -8.8 (or brighter). The density distribution of these stars seems to be approximately Gaussian about the Galactic Centre and contains several dense dark clouds. A lower limit for the density distribution of these stars is 8.3 × 10-6 pc-3.