Tootfinder

A map of the outer gas disk of the Galaxy with direct distances from young stars
Peter Craig, Sukanya Chakrabarti, Alexander R. Pettitt, Robyn Sanderson, Erik Rosolowsky
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05575

A map of the outer gas disk of the Galaxy with direct distances from young stars
For more than fifty years, astronomers have mapped the neutral hydrogen gas in the Galaxy assuming kinematically derived distances. We employ the distances of nearby young stars, which trace the gas from which they formed, in longitude-latitude-velocity space to map this gas without using kinematic distances. We denote this new method "pattern matching". Analysis of simulated spiral galaxies indicates that our pattern matching distances are 24% more accurate than kinematic distances for gas wit…