The Milky Way rotation curve revisited

Abstract

The Herschel survey of the Galactic Plane (Hi-GAL) is a continuum Galactic plane survey in five wavebands at 70, 160, 250, 350 and 500 μm. From such images, about 150 000 sources have been extracted for which the distance determination is a challenge. In this context the velocity of these sources has been determined thanks to a large number of molecular data cubes. But to convert the velocity to kinematic distance, one needs to adopt a rotation curve for our Galaxy. For three different samples of tracers, we test different analytical forms. We find that the power-law expression, θ(R)/θ<SUB>0</SUB> = 1.022 (R/R<SUB>0</SUB>)<SUP>0.0803</SUP> with R<SUB>0</SUB>, θ<SUB>0</SUB> = 8.34 kpc, 240 km s<SUP>-1</SUP> is a good and easily manipulated expression for the distance determination process.