Spatial offsets between interstellar bone-like filaments, radio masers, and cold diffuse CO gas, in the Scutum spiral arm

Abstract

The advent of more precise measurements of distance estimates for some objects (bayesian estimates for filaments, trigonometric estimates for masers) permits a better comparison of their relative locations, and a comparison with a most recent spiral arm model fitted to the diffuse CO 1-0 gas. Our results support the idea that some bone-like filaments, greater than 10 pc (labeled elsewhere as bones, mst, herschel) and smaller than 100 pc, are observed near the potential minimum of the Scutum spiral arm (bone-like filaments are offset outward from masers by about 200 pc).