Related papers: The Galactic Bar
Aims: We show the existence of a small family of inner-galaxy dust lanes and dust lane standing shocks beyond the two major ones that were previously known to exist Methods: We analyze images of CO emission in the inner regions of the…
Previous work has related the Galactic bar to structure in the local stellar velocity distribution. Here we show that the bar also influences the spatial gradients of the velocity vector via the Oort constants. By numerical integration of…
We use N-body chemo-dynamic simulations to study the coupling between morphology, kinematics and metallicity of the bar/bulge region of our Galaxy. We make qualitative comparisons of our results with available observations and find very…
We analyse the positions of RR Lyrae stars in the central region of the Milky Way. In addition to the overall bar shape detected previously, we find evidence for a peanut shaped structure, in form of overdensities near $\ell=-2$ deg and $1$…
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…
Our location in the Milky Way provides an exceptional opportunity to gain insight on the galactic evolution processes, and complement the information inferred from observations of external galaxies. Since the Milky Way is a barred galaxy,…
We compute the predicted optical depth and duration distribution of microlensing events towards Baade's window in a model composed of a Galactic disk and a bar. The bar model is a self-consistent dynamical model built out of individual…
In this contribution I shall focus on the structure of the Galactic thin disk. The evolution of the thin disk and its chemical properties have been discussed in detail by T. Bensby's contribution in conjunction with the properties of the…
A brief review is given of different methods used to determine the pattern speeds of the Galactic bar and spiral arms. The Galactic bar rotates rapidly, with corotation about halfway between the Galactic center and the Sun, and outer…
A recent study, making use of the number of horizontal branch stars observed in infrared photometric surveys and kinematic measurements of M-giant stars from the BRAVA survey, combined with N-body simulations of stellar populations, has…
An overview is given of the results obtained about Galactic Structure studies towards the Galactic Centre from star counts. The results indicate the presence of an old, metal-rich population (Z=0.005-0.08; t=13-15 Gyr), presumably the old…
Microlensing maps -- that is, contours of equal numbers of events per $10^6$ source stars -- are provided for the inner Galaxy under two alternative hypotheses : (1) the bulge is an oblate axisymmetric spheroid or (2) the bulge is a prolate…
We model the formation of a bar plus box/peanut bulge (BP bulge) component in a Milky Way-like disc galaxy using simulations of isolated multi-component systems that evolve from equilibrium initial conditions. The simulations are designed…
A self-consistent stellar dynamical model for the Galactic bar is constructed from about 500 numerically computed orbits with an extension of the Schwarzschild technique. The model fits the {\sl COBE} found asymmetric boxy light…
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…
We re-analyse photometric near-infrared data in order to investigate why it is so hard to get a consensus for the shape and density law of the bulge, as seen from the literature. To solve the problem we use the Besancon Galaxy Model to…
I explore the hypothesis that many of the unusual aspects of the apparent stellar bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud are the result of viewing a triaxial stellar bulge that is embedded in a highly obscuring thin disk. Specifically, this…
The four main findings about the age and abundance structure of the Milky Way bulge based on microlensed dwarf and subgiant stars are: (1) a wide metallicity distribution with distinct peaks at [Fe/H]=-1.09, -0.63, -0.20, +0.12, +0.41; (2)…
We show by numerical simulations that a purely stellar dynamical model composed of an exponential disc, a cuspy bulge, and an NFW halo with parameters relevant to the Milky Way Galaxy is subject to bar formation. Taking into account the…
The circular speed curve of the Milky Way provides a key constraint on its mass distribution, reflecting the axisymmetric component of the gravitational potential. This is especially critical in the inner Galaxy ($R \lesssim 4$ kpc), where…