Determination of the Spiral Pattern Speed in the Galaxy from Three Samples of Stars

Abstract

We invoke the estimates of the amplitudes of the velocity perturbations $f_R$ and $f_\theta$ caused by the influence of a spiral density wave that have been obtained by us previously from three stellar samples. These include Galactic masers with measured VLBI trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions, OB2 stars, and Cepheids. From these data we have obtained new estimates of the spiral pattern speed in the Galaxy $\Omega_p:$ $24.61\pm2.06$, $24.71\pm1.29$ and $25.98\pm1.37$~km s$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-1}$ from the samples of masers, OB2 stars, and Cepheids, respectively. The corotation radii for these three samples $R_{\rm cor}/R_0$ are $1.16\pm0.09$, $1.15\pm0.06$ and $1.09\pm0.06,$ suggesting that the corotation circle is located between the Sun and the Perseus arm segment.