A comparison of the Milky Way’s recent star formation revealed by dust thermal emission and high-mass stars

¹ Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (IAPS). INAF. Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
e-mail: juandiegosolerp@gmail.com
² Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
³ Universität Heidelberg, Zentrum für Astronomie, Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, Albert-Ueberle-Str. 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁴ Universität Heidelberg, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁵ AIM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁶ Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, Canada
⁷ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3512 Sterling Hall, Madison, WI 53706-1507, USA

Received: 31 July 2023
Accepted: 11 September 2023

Abstract

We present a comparison of the Milky Way’s star formation rate (SFR) surface density (∑_SFR) obtained with two independent state-of-the-art observational methods. The first method infers Σ_SFR from observations of the dust thermal emission from interstellar dust grains in far-infrared wavelengths registered in the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL). The second method determines Σ_SFR by modeling the current population of O-, B-, and A-type stars in a 6 kpc × 6 kpc area around the Sun. We find an agreement between the two methods within a factor of two for the mean SFRs and the SFR surface density profiles. Given the broad differences between the observational techniques and the independent assumptions in the methods for computing the SFRs, this agreement constitutes a significant advance in our understanding of the star formation of our Galaxy and implies that the local SFR has been roughly constant over the past 10 Myr.