Related papers: The Galactic Bar
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
I discuss several aspects of secular evolution linked to bars and to boxy/peanut bulges, based on a very large number of high resolution, fully self-consistent $N$-body simulations. When the bar forms, it is as thin as the disc. Its…
The work is devoted to the analysis of the influence of the galactic bar on the orbital motion of globular clusters in the central region of the Galaxy. For this task, 45 globular clusters were selected, 34 of which belong to the bulge/bar…
The dominant stellar population of the central bulge of the Milky Way is old, with roughly solar metallicity. The age is very similar to that of the old metal rich bulge globular clusters and to 47 Tucanae, which has an age of 13 Gyr.…
The formation and evolution of the Milky Way's disc, bar, and bulge remain fundamentally limited by the lack of a contiguous, Galaxy-wide, high-precision chemo-dynamical map. Key open questions - including the survival or destruction of the…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…
Recent large scale surveys of galactic bulge stars allowed to build a detailed map of the bulge kinematics. The bulge exhibits cylindrical rotation consistent with a disky origin which evolved through bar driven secular evolution. However…
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…
Some observations indicate that the Milky Way has two inner components, a bulge and a long bar, which present a misalignment of about 20 degrees that is against the predictions of some theoretical models that are based on numerical…
A galactic disk in a spiral galaxy is generally believed to be embedded in an extended dark matter halo, which dominates its dynamics in the outer parts. However, the shape of the halo is not clearly understood. Here we show that the dark…
The Galactic bulge and bar are critical to our understanding of the Milky Way. However, due to the lack of reliable stellar distances, the structure and kinematics of the bulge/bar beyond the Galactic center have remained largely…
Prompted by work on the buckling instability in barred spiral galaxies, much effort has been devoted lately to the study of boxy/peanut-shaped (B/PS) bulges. Here, we present new bar diagnostics for edge-on spiral galaxies based on periodic…
Evidence for a bar at the center of the Milky Way triggered a renewed enthusiasm for dynamical modelling of the Galactic bar-bulge. Our goal is to compare the kinematics of a sample of tracers, planetary nebulae, widely distributed over the…
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 investigation of the metal-poor tail in the Galactic bulge provides unique information on the early Milky Way assembly and evolution. A chemo-dynamical analysis of 17 very metal-poor stars (VMP, [Fe/H] $<-2.0$) selected from the…
The Galactic bulge is the central spheroid of our Galaxy, containing about one quarter of the total stellar mass of the Milky Way (M_bulge=1.8x10^10 M_sun; Sofue, Honma & Omodaka 2009). Being older than the disk, it is the first massive…
Stellar bars are elongated structures in disk galaxies that can torque and funnel gas inward, influencing galaxy evolution. While strong bars are known to induce rapid inflow, the impact of weaker bars remains less certain. We collected…
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…
Gas interior to the bar of the Milky Way has recently been shown as the closest example of a Low Ionization (Nuclear) Emission Region--LI(N)ER--in the universe. To better understand the nature of this gas, a sample of face-on galaxies with…
Many strong simulated galactic bars experience buckling instability, which manifests itself as a vertical distortion out of the disk plane, and later dissipates. Using a simulation of an isolated Milky Way-like galaxy, I demonstrate that…