This tool calculates kinematic distances in the same manner used in Wenger et al. (2018). It is useful
for quickly calculating the kinematic distance of a single object, but users who wish to perform this calculation on many
objects or wish to change the default parameters of the calculation should download the code on Github
and run it locally. If you use this tool or code in published work, please reference the paper,
the ASCL entry, and the DOI: zenodo.1166001.
Given a Galactic longitude, latitude, LSR velocity, and LSR velocity uncertainty, this tool calculates the kinematic distance using three different methods:
- Method A: "Traditional" kinematic distance using the Brand & Blitz (1993) rotation curve and IAU-defined
solar motion parameters.
- Method B: "Traditional" kinematic distance using the Reid et al. (2014) rotation curve and updated solar
motion parameters.
- Method C: Monte Carlo kinematic distance using the Reid et al. (2014) rotation curve and updated solar
motion parameters. This calculation also returns the Monte Carlo kinematic distance uncertainties. This tool uses 10,000 Monte Carlo samples; download the code to increase the number of samples.
For more details about the calculation (including limitations), please see
Wenger et al. (2018). If you have questions or suggestions, please
contact me.