Local kinematics and the local standard of rest

TLDR

The study reexamines the Sun’s velocity relative to the local standard of rest using stellar kinematics of the Solar neighbourhood. The authors find that metallicity gradients bias the classical determination of the Sun’s V component, and a chemodynamical model yields a revised solar motion of (U,V,W) = (11.1 ± 0.74, 12.24 ± 0.47, 7.25 ± 0.37) km s⁻¹, with V_sun 7 km s⁻¹ higher than earlier estimates and largely insensitive to disc metallicity.

Abstract

We re-examine the stellar kinematics of the Solar neighbourhood in terms of the velocity of the Sun with respect to the local standard of rest. We show that the classical determination of its component V_sun in the direction of Galactic rotation via Stroemberg's relation is undermined by the metallicity gradient in the disc, which introduces a correlation between the colour of a group of stars and the radial gradients of its properties. Comparing the local stellar kinematics to a chemodynamical model which accounts for these effects, we obtain (U,V,W)_sun = (11.1 +/- 0.74, 12.24 +/- 0.47, 7.25 +/-0.37) km/s, with additional systematic uncertainties of ~ (1,2,0.5) km/s. In particular, V_sun is 7 km/s larger than previously estimated. The new values of solar motion are extremely insensitive to the metallicity gradient within the disc.