The Milky Way Joins the Extragalactic World: I. PHANGS
Abstract
Complete catalogs of molecular clouds in the Milky Way allow analysis of the molecular medium and the star formation properties of the Milky Way that closely follows the method used for nearby galaxies, in particular in the PHANGS project. The dependencies of the depletion time on other properties of molecular gas in the Milky Way are similar to those of other galaxies when analyzed in an analogous way. They exhibit a large scatter and relatively weak correlations. The strongest correlation is a decrease in depletion time with increasing velocity dispersion. We explore the effects of spatial resolution, sensitivity, cloud identificaton method, averaging method, and tracer choice on our results. Metallicity effects in converting observations to mass can have a substantial impact. Somewhat fortuitously, differences in conversion methods between PHANGS and the Milky Way do not affect the current comparison. Inadequate spatial resolution, resulting in unresolved cloud structure, has the most important effect on interpretation of both extragalactic observations and existing catalogs of Milky Way clouds.
Related
- The Local Star Formation Environment Predicts Young Star Cluster Radii: Evidence from PHANGS-MUSE H-alpha Maps
- Star Cluster Populations in 38 Spiral Galaxies: Evidence for Near-Universal Mass and Age Distributions from PHANGS
- Quantifying the decline in CO(2-1) intensity around PHANGS-HST star clusters: Constraints on molecular gas dispersal, stellar feedback, and cluster formation efficiency
- Exploring the faint limit of the ESA Plato space mission. A case study of extragalactic research with the self-lensing supermassive black hole binary candidate, Spikey
- Iron Nuclei with Energy of 10^19 eV in Extragalactic Cosmic Rays Near Earth
BibTeX
@misc{evans2026milky,
title = {{The Milky Way Joins the Extragalactic World: I. PHANGS}},
author = {Neal J. Evans II and Davide Elia and Jiayi Sun and Sophia Stuber and Adam K. Leroy},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.21548},
eprint = {2608.21548},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21548},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Milky Way Joins the Extragalactic World: I. PHANGS
AU - Neal J. Evans II
AU - Davide Elia
AU - Jiayi Sun
AU - Sophia Stuber
AU - Adam K. Leroy
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/17
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.21548
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21548
AB - Complete catalogs of molecular clouds in the Milky Way allow analysis of the molecular medium and the star formation properties of the Milky Way that closely follows the method used for nearby galaxies, in particular in the PHANGS project. The dependencies of the depletion time on other properties of molecular gas in the Milky Way are similar to those of other galaxies when analyzed in an analogous way. They exhibit a large scatter and relatively weak correlations. The strongest correlation is a decrease in depletion time with increasing velocity dispersion. We explore the effects of spatial resolution, sensitivity, cloud identificaton method, averaging method, and tracer choice on our results. Metallicity effects in converting observations to mass can have a substantial impact. Somewhat fortuitously, differences in conversion methods between PHANGS and the Milky Way do not affect the current comparison. Inadequate spatial resolution, resulting in unresolved cloud structure, has the most important effect on interpretation of both extragalactic observations and existing catalogs of Milky Way clouds.
ER -