Related papers: The Galactic Bar
Two main scenarios for the formation of the Galactic bulge are invoked, the first one through gravitational collapse or hierarchical merging of subclumps, the second through secular evolution of the Galactic disc. We aim to constrain the…
We investigate the inner regions of the Milky Way with a sample of unprecedented size and coverage thanks to APOGEE DR16 and Gaia EDR3 data. Our inner Galactic sample has more than 26,000 stars within $|X_{\rm Gal}| <5$ kpc, $|Y_{\rm Gal}|…
This review discusses the structure and evolution of the Milky Way, in the context of opportunities provided by asteroseismology of red giants. The review is structured according to the main Galactic components: the thin disk, thick disk,…
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…
Numerous studies of integrated starlight, stellar counts, and kinematics have confirmed that the Milky Way is a barred galaxy. However, far fewer studies have investigated the bar's stellar population properties, which carry valuable…
The Milky Way is the only galaxy for which we can resolve individual stars at all evolutionary phases, from the Galactic center to the outskirt. The last decade, thanks to the advent of near IR detectors and 8 meter class telescopes, has…
Our Galaxy is a barred spiral. Recent work based on the COBE NIR data implies a small bulge-bar and a disk with a short scale-length. The corotation radius of the bar is in the range 3-4.5 kpc. The stellar density distribution beyond the…
The analysis of the first two years of OGLE data revealed 9 microlensing events of the galactic bulge stars, with the characteristic time scales in the range $ 8.6 < t_0 < 62 $ days, where $ t_0 = R_E / V $. The optical depth to…
The Milky Way bulge offers a unique opportunity to investigate in detail the role that different processes such as dynamical instabilities, hierarchical merging, and dissipational collapse may have played in the history of the Galaxy…
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…
The microlensing probability (optical depth $\tau$) toward the Galactic center carries information about the mass distribution of the Galactic bulge/bar, so can be used to constrain the very uncertain shape parameters of the bar. We find…
We construct a large set of dynamical models of the galactic bulge, bar and inner disk using the Made-to-Measure method. Our models are constrained to match the red clump giant density from a combination of the VVV, UKIDSS and 2MASS…
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…
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…
By analyzing a N-body simulation of a bulge formed simply via a bar instability mechanism operating on a kinematically cold stellar disk, and by comparing the results of this analysis with the structural and kinematic properties of the main…
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…
With the steady increase of the sample size of observed microlenses towards the central regions of the Galaxy, the main source of the uncertainty in the lens mass will shift from the simple Poisson noise to the intrinsic non-uniqueness of…
Using observational data on the kinematical properties and density distributions of the subsystems of the Milky Way galaxy, we construct a set of multi-component equilibrium models of its disk. The dynamics of the disk is studied…
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…
I review both well established and more recent findings on the properties of bars, and their host galaxies, stemming from photometric and spectroscopic observations, and discuss how these findings can be understood in terms of a global…