Related papers: The Galactic Bar
The Milky Way has a barred bulge. This article summarizes the current understanding of the main structural parameters and pattern speed of the bar, and compares predicted values for the microlensing optical depth with the bulge microlensing…
I selectively review the various dynamical scenarios that have been explored to date, especially those that illustrate the conundrums. In short, although the existence of asymmetries are convincing enough, the interpretation remains…
Evidence from a variety of sources points towards the existence of a bar in the central few kpc of the Galaxy. The measurements roughly agree on the direction of the bar major axis, but other parameters (axis ratio, size, pattern speed) are…
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…
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…
New constraints on the Milky Way's bar parameters are derived from the gaseous spiral structure within the Galactic bar, and in particular from the identification of the dustlanes leading the bar major axis.
Bars are common galactic structures in the local universe that play an important role in the secular evolution of galaxies, including the Milky Way. In particular, the velocity distribution of individual stars in our galaxy is useful to…
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with the Schechter characteristic luminosity $L_*$, thus an important anchor point of the Hubble sequence of all spiral galaxies. Yet the true appearance of the Milky Way has remained elusive for centuries.…
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…
The observed gas dynamics in the Milky Way can only be explained by a bar in the galactic center. Such a bar is directly visible in the near-IR maps of the bulge, where it causes a distinctive asymmetric light distribution pattern. Another…
Much of our effort in understanding the long-term evolution and morphology of the Milky Way and other galaxies has focused on the equilibrium of its luminous disk. However, the interplay between all components, seen and unseen, is a major…
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…
Some 30% of disc galaxies have a pronounced central bar feature in the disc plane and many more have weaker features of a similar kind. Kinematic data indicate that the bar constitutes a major non-axisymmetric component of the mass…
Using recent observational data, we construct a set of multi-component equilibrium models of the disk of a Milky Way-like galaxy. The disk dynamics are studied using collisionless-gaseous numerical simulations, based on the joined…
Near infrared images from the COBE satellite presented the first clear evidence that our Milky Way galaxy contains a boxy shaped bulge. Recent years have witnessed a gradual paradigm shift in the formation and evolution of the Galactic…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
The Milky Way is a barred galaxy whose central bulge has a box/peanut shape and consists of multiple stellar populations with different orbit distributions. This review describes dynamical and chemo-dynamical equilibrium models for the…
Recent GLIMPSE data have further confirmed the hypothesis of the existence of an in-plane long bar different from the bulge of the Milky Way with the same characteristics as emphasized some years ago by our team. In this paper, we present…
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with physical properties inferred from various tracers informed by the extrapolation of structures seen in other galaxies. However, the distances of these tracers are measured indirectly and are…
The structural parameters of a galaxy can be used to gain insight into its formation and evolution history. In this paper, we strive to compare the Milky Way's structural parameters to other, primarily edge-on, spiral galaxies in order to…