2019MNRAS.489.2819V

Some theories about the spiral arms of galaxies predict an offset between different tracers of star formation. Our goal in this paper is to find such an offset between the observed locations of radio masers and the locations of the arms, using a recent four-arm model fitted to the CO 1-0 gas. Our method is to compare a recent global four-arm spiral model (as fitted to the arms' tangents in the observed broad CO 1-0 gas) with the recent results for the trigonometric distances of radio masers, for the main arms (Cygnus-Norma, Perseus, Sagittarius-Carina, Scutum and Norma). Our results indicate that most radio masers are near the inner edge of each spiral arm (towards the Galactic Centre). These masers are offset from the model arm (where the broad CO 1-0 molecular region resides), by 0.34 ± 0.06 kpc inward. In radial velocity space, the median offset between masers and the CO-fitted model is around 10 ± 1 km s^–1. Based on the fact that the masers are observed here to be radially inward of the broad CO gas in the Cygnus arm at 15 kpc along the Galactic meridian, the corotation radius of the Milky Way disc is >15 kpc distant from the Galactic Centre and the density wave's angular pattern speed is <15 km s^–1 kpc^–1. The pitch angle of the arm should be measured using many arm tracers, and located on both sides of the Galactic meridian, to ensure better precision and to avoid a bias pertinent to a single tracer.