Image Details
Caption: Figure 3.
The methods used to infer NF positions of individual clouds in the CMZ can be combined in a Bayesian framework to create a posterior distribution of NF likely positions for a given cloud on a normalized scale of −1 (far) to +1 (near). The flux difference (orange dashed line) is used as a likelihood function, and is multiplied by distributions for the flux ratio (green), correlation coefficient (blue), absorption fraction (red), and star count ratios (yellow). A handful of clouds have prior data from X-rays (pink), or stellar kinematics (brown). After taking the product of the priors, we report the location of the peak (μ), the relative probability peak (A), and the 68% confidence interval (CI68), which are used to obtain a positional PDF posterior distribution (PPDF; black solid line). The peak of the posterior indicates the most likely NF position of the cloud. All distributions are normalized to unit integral probability.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.