Median Statistics Estimate of the Distance to the Galactic Center

Abstract

We show that error distributions of a compilation of 28 recent independent measurements of the distance from the Sun to the Galactic center, $R_{0}$, are wider than a standard Gaussian and best fit by an $n=4$ Student's $t$ probability density function. Given this non-Gaussianity, the results of our median statistics analysis, summarized as $R_{0}=8.0 \pm 0.3$ kpc ($2\sigma$ error), probably provides the most reliable estimate of $R_{0}$.