Catherine Zucker edited sectionMethdology_To.tex  about 9 years ago

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\section{Methdology}  To search for more bones, we visually inspect regions (|$l$|\textless 30$^{\circ}$, |$b$|\textless 1$^{\circ}$) where arms are predicted to lie according to our current understanding of the Milky Way's structure; the expected (l,b,v) paths of the Galactic arms are calculated using a log-spiral approximation as described recent literature \cite{Dame_2011, Sanna_2014, Vallee_2008}. The predicted positions of the Galactic arms (Scutum-Centaurus, Carina-Sagittarius, Norma-Cygnus, and Perseus) are overlaid on three-color Spitzer GLIMPSE \citep{Benjamin_2003,Churchwell_2009} images in World Wide Telescope---a tool that facilitates easy visualization of several layers of data at scales from the full sky down to the highest-resolution details. As part of our initial criteria, we search for long, largely continuous, filamentary mid-infrared extinction features that are near and roughly parallel to the Galactic mid-plane. This initial inspection yielded about 15 Bone candidates (a video showing how this search worked in WWT is available at tinyurl.com/morenessies).  Regardless of this initial visual inspection, the true nature of these filaments, and their association with a spiral feature, can only be established by looking at radial velocity data. The filament must have similar line-of-sight velocities along its length to ensure its contiguity. Moreover, the measured radial velocities should be very close to those predicted by the Milky Way's rotation curve for arms at a known distance. To investigate the velocity structure of these fifteen filaments, we employ radial velocity data from four separate radio surveys: HOPS \citep{Purcell_2012,Walsh_2011}, MALT90 \citep{Foster_2011,Jackson_2013}, BGPS spectral line follow-up \citep{Schlingman_2011} \cite{Schlingman_2011,Shirley_2013}  and GRS \citep{Jackson_2006}. The HOPS, MALT90, and BGPS surveys are all geared towards probing dense regions hosting the early stages of high mass star formation. From the HOPS survey, we utilize the thermal line from ammonia. With a critical density of about $10^{4}\textrm{ cm}^{-3}$, ammonia traces dense molecular gas and is often found in dense, cool clouds with temperatures less than 100 K \citep{Purcell_2012}. The $\mathrm{N_2H^{+}}$ and $\textrm{HCO}^{+}$ thermal line we utilize from the MALT90 and BGPS surveys are also particularly strong in cold dense regions. While the HOPS and BGPS surveys are complete over 100 and 170 square degrees, respectively, MALT90 was a follow-up survey targeted towards $\approx2000$ dense molecular clumps first identified in the ATLASGAL 870 $\mu\textrm{m}$ Galactic plane survey \citep{Schuller_2009}. As infrared dark clouds tend to harbor cool, high density clumps of gas which fuel the formation of massive stars, all three of these databases contain spectra for hundreds of regions within the longitude range of the potential bone-like filaments. 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 $\mathrm{N_2H+}$, $\textrm{HCO}^+$, 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.