Related papers: The Galactic Bulge: A Review
Adopting a single-zone framework, with accretion of primordial gas on a free-fall timescale, the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge is calculated, assuming (i) a corresponding rapid timescale for star formation, and (ii) an initial…
The carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen abundances and trends in the bulge are discussed in the context of our recent analysis of these elements in an on-going project based on near-IR spectra (Ryde et al. 2009). We obtained these using the CRIRES…
Using our rich observations within the Milky Way to better understand galaxy evolution requires understanding what the Milky Way looks like "as a galaxy" -- that is, its "true" shape and abundance profiles (unskewed by observational…
The new generation of IR surveys are revealing and quantifying Galactic features, providing an improved 3-D interpretation of our own Galaxy. We present an analysis of the global distribution of dust clouds in the bulge using the near-IR…
Our knowledge on the central components of disk galaxies has grown substantially in the past few decades, particularly so in the last. This frantic activity and the complexity of the subject promote confusion in the community. In these…
The closest galaxy center, our own Central Molecular Zone (CMZ; the central 500 pc of the Milky Way), is a powerful laboratory for studying the secular processes that shape galaxies across cosmic time, from large-scale gas flows and star…
The black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy -- the Galactic Black Hole, or GBH -- is a rather modest representative of its class. With a mass of 4 x 10^6 solar masses, it is well over a thousand times less massive than the most…
It has been thought for many years that the Milky Way is an overly large spiral galaxy. Using Cephied distances to 17 spiral galaxies we calculate the true linear diameters of those galaxies. These diameters are then compared to that of the…
The assembly of stellar-dominated cores in elliptical galaxies is key to understanding how cosmic structures evolved. Gravitational lensing offers unique insights into the nature of their stars. We report the discovery of the smallest known…
Bulges are not just elliptical subgalaxies situated in the centers of large spirals. It might seem that way from their ages and chemistry, but bulge kinematics have been known to be different since the first long slit spectra were obtained.…
Stellar halos may hold some of the best preserved fossils of the formation history of galaxies. They are a natural product of the merging processes that probably take place during the assembly of a galaxy, and hence may well be the most…
The last decade has seen apparent dramatic progress in large spectroscopic datasets aimed at the study of the Galactic bulge. We consider remaining problems that appear to be intractable with the existing data, including important issues…
We investigate the inner regions of the Milky Way with a sample of unprecedented size and coverage thanks to APOGEE DR16 and Gaia EDR3 data. Our inner Galactic sample has more than 26,000 stars within $|X_{\rm Gal}| <5$ kpc, $|Y_{\rm Gal}|…
We compute the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge in the context of an inside-out model for the formation of the Milky Way. The model contains updated stellar yields from massive stars. The main purpose of the paper is to compare the…
Thick disks appear to be common in external large spiral galaxies and our own Milky Way also hosts one. The existence of a thick disk is possibly directly linked to the formation history of the host galaxy and if its properties is known it…
Our understanding of the Milky Way disk is rapidly improving with the recent advent of the high quality and vast amount of observational data. We summarize our current view of the structure of the Milky Way disk, such as the masses and…
Quantification of the Galaxy's star formation history involves both the duration and the rate of formation, with these parameters being known with different precision for different populations. The early rate of star formation is knowable…
Current ideas on the formation of the Galaxy are reviewed. Many of the observed characteristics of our Milky Way System are consistent with a scenario in which the Galaxy formed inside out, with the inner part of it evolving by rapid…
In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…
The star formation rate history of the Milky Way is derived using the chromospheric age distribution for 552 stars in the solar neighborhood. The stars sample birthsites distributed over a very large range of distances because of orbital…