Warp and flare of the Galactic disc revealed with supergiants by Gaia EDR3

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
e-mail: zofiachrobakova@gmail.com
² Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³ Faculty of Mathematics, Physics, and Informatics, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina, 842 48 Bratislava, Slovakia

Received: 9 February 2022
Accepted: 31 May 2022

Abstract

Context. The outer Galactic disc contains some features such as the warp and flare, whose origin is still debated. The Gaia data provide an excellent opportunity to probe the Galactic disc at large distances and study these features.

Aims. We derive the density distributions of the average (old) whole population and the supergiants (representative of a young population), and we use them to constrain their warp and flare. By comparing the results, we study how the properties of these phenomena depend on the studied population.

Methods. We used Lucy’s deconvolution method to recover corrected star counts as a function of distance, from which we derive the density distribution.

Results. We find that supergiants have an asymmetric warp, reaching a maximum amplitude of z_w = 0.658 kpc and minimum amplitude of z_w = −0.717 kpc at a distance of R = [19.5, 20] kpc, which is almost twice as high as the amplitude of the whole population of the disc. We find a significant flare of the whole population, especially in the thick disc. The scale height increases from h_z,thick ≈ 0.7 kpc and h_z, thin ≈ 0.3 kpc in the solar neighbourhood, to h_z, thick ≈ 2.6 kpc and h_z, thin ≈ 0.6 kpc in the remote regions of the Milky Way (R ≈ 18 kpc). The supergiants’ population has only a small flare.