Related papers: The Milky Way Bulge
The bar/bulge and inner disk are fundamental building blocks of the Milky Way, containing a large fraction of its stellar mass. However, stars in these regions are faint, crowded, and have high extinction, which makes studying their…
We present a study of dense gas emission in the Milky Way in order to serve as a basis for comparison with extragalactic results. This study combines new observations of HCN, CS, and CO in individual GMCs and in the Milky Way plane with…
Due to the foreground extinction of the Milky Way, galaxies appear increasingly fainter the closer they lie to the Galactic Equator, creating a "zone of avoidance" of about 25% in the distribution of optically visible galaxies. A…
The observations of bulge/disk segregation in the Universe are reviewed with a focus on whether the observed segregation in clusters is local or global, and whether there is bulge-disk segregation on large-scales. The high concentration of…
Invited Review at IAU Symp 164 on Stellar Populations. The Milky Way Galaxy offers a unique opportunity for testing theories of galaxy formation and evolution. The study of the spatial distribution, kinematics and chemical abundances of…
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 constrain the formation history of the Milky Way bulge using a two-infall Galactic Chemical Evolution (GCE) framework implemented in the OMEGA++ code. We recover a best-fit scenario in which the bulge forms through an early, rapid…
Cosmologists have often considered the Milky Way as a typical spiral galaxy, and its properties have considerably influenced the current scheme of galaxy formation. Here we compare the general properties of the Milky Way disk and halo with…
The Milky Way's Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is the largest concentration of dense molecular gas in the Galaxy, the structure of which is shaped by the complex interplay between Galactic-scale dynamics and extreme physical conditions.…
Near- and mid-IR survey data from DENIS and ISOGAL are used to investigate the structure and formation history of the inner 10 degree (1.4 kpc) of the Milky Way galaxy. Synthetic bolometric corrections and extinction coefficients in the…
The Milky Way's nuclear star cluster (NSC) is a unique laboratory to study the formation and evolution of dense stellar systems around a supermassive black hole. Previous work suggests that most stars in the NSC are old; however, the…
The dense molecular gas is the ideal tracer of the spiral structure in the Milky Way, and should be used intensively to solve the puzzle of its structure. In spite of our position inside the plane, we can hope to disentangle the structures,…
Describing how the properties of the interstellar medium combine across size-scales is crucial for understanding star formation scaling laws and connecting Galactic and extragalactic data of molecular clouds. We describe how the statistical…
Using 3D hydrodynamic calculations we simulate formation of molecular clouds in the Galaxy. The simulations take into account molecular hydrogen chemical kinetics, cooling and heating processes. Comprehensive gravitational potential…
We explore some basic observational consequences of assuming that the dark matter in the Milky Way consists mainly of molecular clouds, and that cosmic rays can penetrate these clouds. In a favoured model of the clouds, this penetration…
We present the first systematic study of the density structure of clouds found in a complete sample covering all major molecular clouds in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ; inner $\sim{}200~\rm{}pc$) of the Milky Way. This is made possible…
Analyzing high-resolution longitude-velocity (LV) diagrams of the Galactic Center observed with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope in the CO and CS line emissions, we obtain a central rotation curve of the Milky Way. We combine it with the data…
Although there have been numerous studies of chemical abundances in the Galactic bulge, the central two degrees have been relatively unexplored due to the heavy and variable interstellar extinction, extreme stellar crowding, and the…
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
The inner 300-500 pc of the Milky Way has some of the most extreme gas conditions in our Galaxy. Physical properties of the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), including temperature, density, thermal pressure, and turbulent pressure, are key…