Vertical Structure and Kinematics of the Galactic Outer Disk

Abstract

We report measurements of parallax and proper motion for four 22 GHz water maser sources as part of VERA Outer Rotation Curve project. All sources show Galactic latitudes of $>$ 2$^{\circ}$ and Galactocentric distances of $>$ 11 kpc at the Galactic longitude range of 95$^{\circ}$ $< l <$ 126$^{\circ}$. The sources trace the Galactic warp reaching to 200$\sim$400 pc, and indicate the signature of the warp to 600 pc toward the north Galactic pole. The new results along with previous results in the literature show the maximum height of the Galactic warp is increased with Galactocentric distance. Also, we examined velocities perpendicular to the disk for the sample, and found an oscillatory behavior between the vertical velocities and Galactic heights. This behavior suggests the existence of the bending (vertical density) waves, possibly induced by a perturbing satellite (e.g. passage of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy).