20–27 Mar 2026
Wild View Resorts
Africa/Gaborone timezone

Exploring the 3D Structure of the Milky Way: Distribution of Galactic HI from Bayesian Distance Estimation

Not scheduled
20m
Wild View Resorts

Wild View Resorts

Plot 80 President Avenue, Kasane, Botswana
In-person - Poster Presentation 10 S&E poster Science & Engineering

Speaker

Dr Portia Legodi (University of South Africa)

Description

We explore the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way by tracing neutral atomic hydrogen (H I) using MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS) data. We aim to map the Galaxy’s spiral arms and large-scale features both along the midplane and at higher Galactic latitudes. Employing a Bayesian framework, consistent with Reid et al. (2016), we infer robust distance estimates to HI clouds from their observed line-of-sight velocities, RA, and Dec. This approach allows us to construct a detailed 3D distribution of H I gas. We will summarise the project’s status and present results on spiral-arm structure, vertical neutral hydrogen distribution, and potential Galactic disk asymmetries.

Stream Science or Engineering

Primary author

Dr Portia Legodi (University of South Africa)

Co-authors

Prof. James Chibueze (University of South Africa) Dr Jude Ugwu (University of South Africa) Dr Willice Obonyo (University of South Africa)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.