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We test two different methods of using near-infrared extinction to estimate distances to dark clouds in the first quadrant of the Galaxy using large near infrared (2MASS and UKIDSS) surveys. VLBI parallax measurements of masers around massive young stars provide the most direct and bias-free measurement of the distance to these dark clouds. We compare the extinction distance estimates to these maser parallax distances. We also compare these distances to kinematic distances, including recent re-calibrations of the Galactic rotation curve. The extinction distance methods agree with the maser parallax distances (within the errors) between 66% and 100% of the time (depending on method and input survey) and between 85% and 100% of the time outside of the crowded Galactic center. Although the sample size is small, extinction distance methods reproduce maser parallax distances better than kinematic distances; furthermore, extinction distance methods do not suffer from the kinematic distance ambiguity. This validation gives us confidence that these extinction methods may be extended to additional dark clouds where maser parallaxes are not available.
The determination of reliable distances to Planetary Nebulae (PNe) is one of the major limitations in the study of this class of objects in the Galaxy. The availability of new photometric surveys such as IPHAS covering large portions of the sky gives
We present high-resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of a region of gas flowing in a spiral arm and identify dense gas clouds to investigate their kinematics with respect to a Milky Way model. We find that, on average, the gas in th
For application to surveys of interstellar matter and Galactic structure, we compute new spectrophotometric distances to 139 OB stars frequently used as background targets for UV spectroscopy. Many of these stars have updated spectral types and digit
Probability density functions are determined from new stellar parameters for the distance moduli of stars for which the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) has obtained spectra with S/N>=10. Single-Gaussian fits to the pdf in distance modulus suffice f
Distance measurements to molecular clouds are essential and important. We present directly measured distances to 169 molecular clouds in the fourth quadrant of the Milky Way. Based on the near-infrared photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey an