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We present a large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distance estimates in the Southern sky. Based on the three-dimensional dust extinction map and the best-fitting extinction and distance information of over 17 million stars presented in Guo et al. (2021, ApJ, 906, 47), we have identified 250 dust/molecular clouds in the Southern sky using a hierarchical structure identification algorithm. Amongst these are 71 clouds located at high Galactic latitudes (b < −10°). We have estimated the distances to the clouds by fitting the extinction versus distance profiles of the lines of sight overlapping with the clouds, using a simple Gaussian dust distribution model. The typical uncertainties of the distances are less than 7 per cent. We also provide the physical properties of the individual clouds, including the linear radius, mass and surface mass density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We perform analysis of the 3D kinematics of Milky Way disc stars in mono-age populations. We focus on stars between Galactocentric distances of R  = 6 and 14  kpc, selected from the combined LAMOST Data Release 4 (DR4) red clump giant stars and Gaia DR2 proper motion catalogue. We confirm the 3D asymmetrical motions of recent works and provide time tagging of the Galactic outer disc asymmetrical motions near the anticentre direction out to Galactocentric distances of 14 kpc. Radial Galactocentric motions reach values up to 10 km s−1, depending on the age of the population, and present a north–south asymmetry in the region corresponding to density and velocity substructures that were sensitive to the perturbations in the early 6  Gyr. After that time, the disc stars in this asymmetrical structure have become kinematically hotter, and are thus not sensitive to perturbations, and we find the structure is a relatively younger population. With quantitative analysis, we find stars both above and below the plane at R ≳ 9 kpc that exhibit bending mode motions of which the sensitive duration is around 8  Gyr. We speculate that the in-plane asymmetries might not be mainly caused by a fast rotating bar, intrinsically elliptical outer disc, secular expansion of the disc, or streams. Spiral arm dynamics, out-of-equilibrium models, minor mergers or others are important contributors. Vertical motions might be dominated by bending and breathing modes induced by complicated inner or external perturbers. It is likely that many of these mechanisms are coupled together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new three-dimensional (3D) interstellar dust reddening maps of the Galactic plane in three colours, E (G − K S), E (G BP − G RP), and E (H − K S). The maps have a spatial angular resolution of 6 arcmin and covers over 7000 deg2 of the Galactic plane for Galactic longitude 0° < l < 360° and latitude | b | < 10°. The maps are constructed from robust parallax estimates from the Gaia Data Release 2 (Gaia DR2) combined with the high-quality optical photometry from the Gaia DR2 and the infrared photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer survey. We estimate the colour excesses, E (G − K S), E (G BP − G RP), and E (H − K S), of over 56 million stars with the machine-learning algorithm Random Forest regression, using a training data set constructed from the large-scale spectroscopic surveys, Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope, Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration, and Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment. The results reveal the large-scale dust distribution in the Galactic disc, showing a number of features consistent with the earlier studies. The Galactic dust disc is clearly warped and show complex structures possibly spatially associated with the Sagittarius, Local, and Perseus arms. We also provide the empirical extinction coefficients for the Gaia photometry that can be used to convert the colour excesses presented here to the line-of-sight extinction values in the Gaia photometric bands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classification of stellar spectra from voluminous spectra is a very important and challenging task. In order to better classify stellar spectra, inspired by the principle of deep convolutional neural network (CNN), we propose a supervised algorithm for stellar spectra classification based on 1D stellar spectra convolutional neural network (1D SSCNN). In 1D SSCNN, we modify the traditional 2D convolutional neural network into 1D network to adapt to the spectral classification. On the basis of using convolution algorithm, the spectral features are extracted and used for classification. We first use the stellar spectra data to train a 1D SSCNN to obtain a well-trained model, and then we apply the well-trained model to classify the unknown spectra. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms, we apply 1D SSCNN to classify three spectral types: F-type spectra, G-type spectra, and K-type spectra and 10 subclasses of K-type spectra: A0-type, A5-type, F0-type, F5-type, G0-type, G5-type, K0-type, K5-type, M0-type, and M5-type spectra from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our 1D SSCNN algorithm obtain higher classification accuracy compared with support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the correlation between extinction and HI and CO emission at intermediate and high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 10°) within the footprint of the Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic anticentre (XSTPS-GAC) on small and large scales. In Paper I, we present a three-dimensional (3D) dust extinction map within the footprint of XSTPS-GAC, covering a sky area of over 6000 deg² at a spatial angular resolution of 6 arcmin. In the current work, the map is combined with data from gas tracers, including HI data from the Galactic Arecibo L-band Feed Array HI survey and CO data from the Planck mission, to constrain the values of dust-to-gas ratio DGR = AV/N(H) and CO-to-H2 conversion factor XCO = N(H2)/WCO for the entire GAC footprint excluding the Galactic plane, as well as for selected star-forming regions (such as the Orion, Taurus and Perseus clouds) and a region of diffuse gas in the northern Galactic hemisphere. For the whole GAC footprint, we find DGR = (4.15 ± 0.01) × 10-22 mag cm² and XCO = (1.72 ± 0.03) × 1020 cm-2 (K km s-1)-1. We have also investigated the distribution of 'CO-dark' gas (DG) within the footprint of GAC and found a linear correlation between the DG column density and the V-band extinction: N (DG) ≃ 2.2 × 1021(AV - AcV) cm-2. The mass fraction of DG is found to be fDG ~ 0.55 towards the Galactic anticentre, which is respectively about 23 and 124 per cent of the atomic and CO-traced molecular gas in the same region. This result is consistent with the theoretical work of Papadopoulos et al. but much larger than that expected in the H2 cloud models by Wolfire et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a three-dimensional extinction map in the r band. The map has a spatial angular resolution, depending on latitude, between 3 and 9 arcmin and covers the entire Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anticentre (XSTPS-GAC) survey area of over 6000 deg2 for Galactic longitude 140 < l < 240 deg and latitude −60 < b < 40 deg. By cross-matching the photometric catalogue of the XSTPS-GAC with those of 2MASS and WISE, we have built a multiband photometric stellar sample of about 30 million stars and applied spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to the sample. By combining photometric data from the optical to the near-infrared, we are able to break the degeneracy between the intrinsic stellar colours and the amounts of extinction by dust grains for stars with high photometric accuracy, and trace the extinction as a function of distance for low Galactic latitude and thus highly extincted regions. This has allowed us to derive the best-fitting extinction and distance information of more than 13 million stars, which are used to construct the three-dimensional extinction map. We have also applied a Rayleigh–Jeans colour excess (RJCE) method to the data using the 2MASS and WISE colour (H − W2). The resulting RJCE extinction map is consistent with the integrated two-dimensional map deduced using the best-fitting SED algorithm. However for individual stars, the amounts of extinction yielded by the RJCE method suffer from larger errors than those given by the best-fitting SED algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]