Related papers: The Galactic Bulge: A Review
The age and chemical characteristics of the Galactic bulge link to the formation and evolutionary history of the Galaxy. Data-driven methods and large surveys enable stellar ages and precision chemical abundances to be determined for vast…
The stellar population of the Milky Way bulge is thoroughly studied, with a plethora of measurements from virtually the full suite of instruments available to astronomers. It is thus perhaps surprising that alongside well-established…
Studies of nearby galaxies including the Milky Way have provided fundamental information on the evolution of structure in the Universe, the existence and nature of dark matter, the origin and evolution of galaxies, and the global features…
The DENIS/ISOGAL near/mid-IR survey of the Milky Way for the first time probes stellar populations in the innermost obscured regions of our galaxy. Ages, metallicities and extinction-corrected luminosities are derived for these stars…
In this review, we present a brief description of observational efforts to understand the Galactic thick disk and its relation to the other Galactic components. This review primarily focused on elemental abundance patterns of the thick disk…
The Galactic bulge is a tumultuous dense region of space, packed with stars separated by far smaller distances than those in the Solar neighborhood. A quantification of the frequency and proximity of close stellar encounters in this…
The Milky Way's bar dominates the orbits of stars and the flow of cold gas in the inner Galaxy, and is therefore of major importance for Milky Way dynamical studies in the Gaia era. Here we discuss the pronounced peanut shape of the…
The bulge is a region of the Galaxy of tremendous interest for understanding galaxy formation. However measuring photometry and kinematics in it raises several inherent issues, such as severe crowding and high extinction in the visible.…
We review observational evidence bearing on the formation of a prototypical large spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. New ground- and space-based studies of globular star clusters and dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide a wealth of information to…
The history of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy is found in the spatial distribution, kinematics, age and chemical abundance distributions of long-lived stars. From this fossil record one can in principle extract the star…
Galactic archaeology represents a multidisciplinary approach aimed at unraveling the intricate history of the Milky Way galaxy through the study of its stellar populations. This abstract delves into the significance of galactic archaeology…
The Milky Way (MW) bulge is a fundamental Galactic component for understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular our own. The ESO Public Survey VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea is a deep near-IR survey mapping the…
The knowledge of the intrinsic three-dimensional (3D) structure of galaxy components provides crucial information about the physical processes driving their formation and evolution. In this paper I discuss the main developments and results…
In its first part, this paper summarizes recent work on the mass and shape of the Galactic dark halo. The second part presents a review of the large-scale structure of the Milky Way, and of the evidence that the inner Galaxy is dominated by…
We review current knowledge on the structure, properties and evolution of galactic bulges, considering particularly common preconceptions in the light of recent observational results.
The relics of building blocks that made stellar halo and bulge are yet to be discovered unless they were completely disrupted throughout the history of the Galaxy. Here we suggest that about 25% of the Milky Way globular clusters have…
The Galactic Bulge, as the center of the Galaxy, is the closest laboratory for studying galaxy formation and evolution. However, its study faces significant challenges due to heavy dust extinction. This paper is devoted to deriving the…
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with the Schechter characteristic luminosity $L_*$, thus an important anchor point of the Hubble sequence of all spiral galaxies. Yet the true appearance of the Milky Way has remained elusive for centuries.…
The nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way is a unique target in the Universe. Contrary to extragalactic nuclear star clusters, using current technology it can be resolved into tens of thousands of individual stars. This allows us to study…
This review compiles the results of recent studies of molecular gas conditions in the central six hundred parsecs of our Galaxy. The review begins by placing our Galactic center into context with the rest of our galaxy. It next discusses…