Related papers: The inner Galactic bulge: evidence for a nuclear b…
Near infrared images from the COBE satellite presented the first clear evidence that our Milky Way galaxy contains a boxy shaped bulge. Recent years have witnessed a gradual paradigm shift in the formation and evolution of the Galactic…
The Galactic bulge is now considered to be the inner three-dimensional part of the Milky Way's bar. It has a peanut shape and is characterized by cylindrical rotation. In N-body simulations, box/peanut bulges arise from disks through bar…
It has been known for some time that the Milky Way is a barred disk galaxy. More recently several studies inferred from starcount observations that the Galaxy must contain a separate, new, flat long bar component, twisted relative to the…
Observations show a clear vertical metallicity gradient in the Galactic bulge, which is often taken as a signature of dissipative processes in the formation of a classical bulge. Various evidence shows, however, that the Milky Way is a…
Over the last decade there have been a series of results supporting the hypothesis of the existence of a long thin bar in the Milky Way with a half-length of 4.5 kpc and a position angle of around 45 deg. This is apparently a very different…
The inner Milky Way is dominated by a boxy, triaxial bulge which is believed to have formed through disk instability processes. Despite its proximity, its large-scale properties are still not very well known, due to our position in the…
While it is incontrovertible that the inner Galaxy contains a bar, its structure near the Galactic plane has remained uncertain, where extinction from intervening dust is greatest. We investigate here the Galactic bar outside the bulge, the…
Studies of the red clump giant population in the inner Milky Way suggest the Galactic bulge/bar has a boxy/peanut/X-shaped structure as predicted by its formation via a disc buckling instability. We used a non-parametric method of…
We use the VVV survey observations in bulge regions close to the Galactic plane to trace the bar inclination at the Galactic latitude b\sim\pm1{\deg} and to investigate a distinct structure in the inner regions of the bar that was…
The majority of massive disk galaxies, including our own, have stellar bars with vertically thick inner regions -- so-called "boxy/peanut-shaped" (B/P) bulges. The most commonly suggested mechanism for the formation of B/P bulges is a…
Numerical simulations have shown that the X-shaped structure in the Milky Way bulge can naturally arise from the bar instability and buckling instability. To understand the influence of the buckling amplitude on the morphology of the…
The gas distribution and dynamics in the inner Galaxy present many unknowns as the origin of the asymmetry of the longitude-velocity (lv) diagram of the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). On the other hand, there are recent evidences in the…
Using $N$-body simulations we study the buckling instability in a galactic bar forming in a Milky Way-like galaxy. The galaxy is initially composed of an axisymmetric, exponential stellar disk embedded in a spherical dark matter halo. The…
A map of the projected density of the old stellar population of the Galactic Bulge region is reconstructed using 2MASS data. By making a combination of the H and K photometric bands, it is possible to overcome the effect of reddening, and…
Over the last decade a series of results have lent support to the hypothesis of the existence of a long thin bar in the Milky Way with a half-length of 4.5 kpc and a position angle of around 45 deg. This is apparently a very different…
Recent GLIMPSE data have further confirmed the hypothesis of the existence of an in-plane long bar different from the bulge of the Milky Way with the same characteristics as emphasized some years ago by our team. In this paper, we present…
A vertical X-shaped structure was recently reported in the Galactic bulge. Here we present evidence of a similar X-shaped structure in the Shen et al. (2010) bar/boxy bulge model that simultaneously matches the stellar kinematics…
We present new results from BRAVA, a large scale radial velocity survey of the Galactic bulge, using M giant stars selected from the Two Micron All Sky Survey catalogue as targets for the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory 4m Hydra…
Context: There is still some debate about the presence and the morphological properties of the long bar in the inner Galaxy. Aims: We investigate the morphological properties of the long Galactic bar using the VVV survey extending star…
We review the observational evidences concerning the three-dimensional structure of the Galactic bulge. Although the inner few kpc of our Galaxy are normally referred to as {\it the bulge}, all the observations demonstrate that this region…