Related papers: An inner ring and the micro lensing toward the Bul…
We study the benefits of polarimetry observations of microlensing events to detect and characterize circumstellar disks around the microlensed stars located at the Galactic bulge. These disks which are unresolvable from their host stars…
We discuss the results of the MEGA microlensing campaign towards M31. Our analysis is based on an analytical evaluation of the microlensing rate, taking into account the observational efficiency as given by the MEGA collaboration. In…
Highly inclined (edge-on) disk galaxies offer the unique perspective to constrain their intrinsic flattening, $c/a$, where $c$ and $a$ are respectively the vertical and long radial axes of the disk measured at suitable stellar densities.…
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…
Measurements of the microlensing optical depth and event rate toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) can be used to probe the distribution and mass function of compact objects in the direction toward that galaxy - in the Milky Way disk,…
We investigate the microlensing effects on a source star surrounded by a circumstellar disk, as a function of wavelength. The microlensing light curve of the system encodes the geometry and surface brightness profile of the disk. In the…
The observed spectra of the microlensed sources towards the Galactic bulge may be used as a tool for studying the kinematics and extinction effects in the Galactic bulge. In this paper, we first investigate the expected distribution of the…
We surveyed 291 MSX/2MASS infrared objects in the 7 x 2 deg area of the galactic center in the 43 GHz SiO J=1--0 v=1 and 2 maser lines, obtaining accurate radial velocities of 163 detected objects. The surveyed area is the region where the…
We use the timescale distribution of ~3000 microlensing events measured by the OGLE-III survey, together with accurate new made-to-measure dynamical models of the Galactic bulge/bar region, to measure the IMF in the inner Milky Way. The…
Our Galaxy is known to contain a central boxy/peanut-shaped bulge, yet the importance of a classical, pressure-supported component within the central part of the Milky Way is still being debated. It should be most visible at low…
A high optical depth to gravitational microlensing towards the galactic bulge is consistent with current models of the galactic bar. The low optical depth towards the LMC can probably be accounted for by the ordinary stars in our galaxy and…
Barred galaxies constitute about two thirds of observed disc galaxies. Bars affect not only the mass distribution of gas and stars, but also that of the dark matter. An elongation of the inner dark matter halo is known as the halo bar. We…
The intrinsic photometric properties of inner and outer stellar bars within 17 double-barred galaxies are thoroughly studied through a photometric analysis consisting of: i) two-dimensional multi-component photometric decompositions, and…
Using a variety of parameters of local galaxy density, we have examined the effects of the environmental density on the presence of bar structures in spiral galaxies of various morphological types. For an extensive sample of nearby…
A new model for the luminosity distribution in the inner Milky Way is found, using a non-parametric penalized maximum-likelihood algorithm to deproject a dereddened COBE/DIRBE L-band map of the inner Galaxy. The model is also constrained by…
In this paper, we study gravitational lensing by groups of galaxies. Since groups are abundant and therefore have a large covering fraction on the sky, lensing by groups is likely to be very important observationally. Besides, it has…
I demonstrate that one can detect pixel gravitational microlensing events at the rate $\sim 180\ {\rm events}\ {\rm yr}^{-1}$ and that some fraction of events ($\sim 15$) will be good enough to measure time scales at the $20\%$ level if the…
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…
Weak lensing can be observed through a number of effects on the images of distant galaxies; their shapes are sheared, their sizes and fluxes (magnitudes) are magnified and their positions on the sky are modified by the lensing field. Galaxy…
In this paper, we investigate the applicability of the astrometric method to the determination of the lens parameters for gravitational microlensing events toward both the LMC and the Galactic bulge. For this analysis, we investigate the…