ESA Science & Technology - Spiral Structure in the Milky Way: Confronting observations and theory

Start date: 07 Nov 2010
Address: Bahía Inglesa, Copiapó, Chile

Our knowledge of spiral arm traces in the Milky Way and kinematics in the solar neighbourhood has increased significantly over the last decades. Despite of this, there is not yet a consensus on basic parameters of the spiral structure in our Galaxy. Major new facilities (such as ALMA, GAIA, LSST, VISTA, VST) will provide a wealth of data on the spatial and kinematics distributions on material in the Galaxy. Thus, it seems appropriate to perform a census of the current data, confront them with theory and models of spiral structure, and thereby map the path towards a consolidated view of the spiral pattern in the Milky Way.