Catherine Zucker edited sectionMethdology_To.tex  about 9 years ago

Commit id: 1e98455e39053799a2a37989510bd5e75c033ec7

deletions | additions      

       

In cases where HOPS, MALT90, and BGPS catalog data are not available along the extinction feature, we were also able to extract spectra from GRS (high resolution $^{13}$CO (1-0) data) and MALT90 p-p-v cubes using the spectrum extracter tool in Glue. A demonstration of the procedure used to extract velocities in Glue is shown in figure \ref{fig:glue}. As CO traces lower density gas (on average $10^2 \textrm{ cm}^{-3}$) and $\mathrm{N_2H+}$, HCO$^+$, and $\textrm{NH}_3$ trace high density gas ($>10^4 \textrm{ cm}^{-3}$), the dense gas sources provide much stronger evidence for the velocity of cold, dense, filamentary IRDCs. When dense gas sources were not available, the complete and unbiased high resolution GRS survey, although less desirable, allows us to roughly gauge the velocity along entire lengths of filaments. In filaments composed entirely of GRS spectra, we took HOPS spectra over the entire filament using Glue and confirmed that this HOPS-determined velocity agreed with GRS-determined average velocity to within 5 km/s. In the future, we hope to take higher resolution spectra of high density tracers to better pinpoint the velocity of these IRDCs.   By overlaying the HOPS, MALT90, BGPS, and GRS determined velocities on a p-v diagram of CO emission, we determine whether these filaments are physical spines or simply a chance projection of mid-infrared extinction features along our line-of-sight. For this study, we use the whole-galaxy \citet{Dame_2001} CO survey to locate each of the arms in p-p-v space. Of the approximately fifteen candidates identified visually, ten of these candidates are within 10 km/s of the Scutum-Centaurus and Norma-Cygnus arms. The central coordinates for these ten filaments, along with their average lengths, LSR velocities, and distances, are listed in table \ref{tab:candidates}. figure \ref{fig:candidates}.  We plot these ten candidates in p-p-v space, as shown in figure \ref{fig:skeleton}. In addition to showing our Bone candidates, we show several different predictions of the positions of two spiral arms toward the inner Galaxy in longitude-velocity space, from \citet{Dame_2011}, \citet{Sanna_2014}, \citet{Shane_1972}, and \citet{Vallee_2008}. For reference, we note that the new BeSSeL (maser) results from \citet{Sato_2014} in the first quadrant favor the oldest, HI-based \citet{Shane_1972}, fits for the Scutum arm. After narrowing down our list to ten filaments with kinematic structure consistent with Galactic rotation, we develop a set of quantitative criteria for objects to be called "bones:"