Welcome to SpiralMap’s documentation!

We present a Python library of the Milky Way’s major spiral arm models and maps. Over the years several independent studies conducted across wavelengths have revealed rich spiral structure in the Galaxy. Here, we have tried to compile the major models and maps in a user friendly manner. Most users are interested in simply extracting the trace or overplotting the spiral arms on another plot of interest, for example while comparing substructure in the velocity field to the location of spiral arms. To this end, with SpiralMap one can:

  • Access 8 independent spiral arm models from literature. List of the available models is here.

  • Extract the trace of individual or all spiral arms from a particular model.

  • Directly overplot spiral arms with choice of Cartesian or Polar coordinates, and in Heliocentric or Galactocentric frames.

For a quick demonstration please see the accompanying Jupyter Notebook.

_images/movie_.gif

A gallery of the various models included in this version, in this case in polar projection and in Galactocentric coordinates with the locations of the Sun and the Galactic center (star) marked.

Indices and tables