Related papers: The 3D structure of the Galactic bulge
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…
Bars have a complex three-dimensional shape. In particular their inner part is vertically much thicker than the parts further out. Viewed edge-on, the thick part of the bar is what is commonly known as a boxy-, peanut- or X- bulge and…
We present a deep near-infrared wide-angle photometric analysis of the structure of the inner Galactic bar and central disk. The presence of a triaxial structure at the centre of the Galaxy is confirmed, consistent with a bar inclined at…
I review some of the work on bars which is closely linked to the bar/bulge system in our Galaxy. Several independent studies, using totally independent methods, come to the same results about the 3D structure of a bar, i.e., that a bar is…
We present the first statistical study on the intrinsic three-dimensional (3D) shape of a sample of 83 galactic bars extracted from the CALIFA survey. We use the galaXYZ code to derive the bar intrinsic shape with a statistical approach.…
We have observed 60 edge-on galaxies in the NIR in order to study the stellar distribution in galaxies with box/peanut-shaped bulges. The much smaller amount of dust extinction at these wavelengths allows us to identify in almost all target…
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…
Like the majority of spiral galaxies, the Milky Way contains a central non-axisymmetric bar component. Our position in the Galactic plane renders it rather hard to see, but also allows us to make measurements of the bar that are completely…
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand 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…
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…
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…
Kn-band imaging of a sample of 30 edge-on spiral galaxies with a boxy or peanut-shaped (B/PS) bulge is discussed. Galaxies with a B/PS bulge tend to have a more complex morphology than galaxies with other bulge types, unsharp-masked images…
We review the present observational knowledge on the spatial distribution and the physical state of the different (molecular, atomic and ionized) components of the interstellar gas in the innermost 3 kpc of our Galaxy -- a region which we…
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 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…
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 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…
New evidence for a long thin Galactic bar (in contradistinction to the bulge), as well as for the existence of the ring and the truncation of the inner disc, are sought in the DENIS survey. First, we examine DENIS and Two Micron Galactic…
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…