Related papers: The structure of the Galactic bar
(Abridge) Bars are very common in the centre of the disc galaxies, and they drive the evolution of their structure. A volume-limited sample of 2106 disc galaxies extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 was studied to…
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…
We study the gas inflows towards the Galactic Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) based on the gas morphological and kinematic features from the MWISP in the region of l=1.2 deg--19.0 deg and |b|<3.0 deg. We find that the near dust lane extends to…
We report here results of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of gas flows in barred galaxies, with a focus on gas dynamics in the central kiloparsec. In a single bar with an Inner Lindblad Resonance, we find either near-circular…
We present a polarisation map of the warm dust emission from the minispiral in the central parsec of the Galactic centre. The observations were made at a wavelength of 12.5 microns with CanariCam mounted on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio…
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…
We present evidence to support an earlier indication that the Galaxy is embedded in an extended, highly inclined, triaxial halo outlined by the spatial distribution of companion galaxies to the Milky Way. Signatures of this spatial…
We present the results of a wide-field camera survey of the stars in the Monoceros Ring, thought to be an additional structure in the Milky Way of unknown origin. Lying roughly in the plane of the Milky Way, this may represent a unique…
We present evidence that the curious stellar population found by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in the Galactic anticentre direction extends to other distant fields that skirt the plane of the Milky Way. New data, taken with the INT Wide…
A large position angle misalignment between the stellar bar and the distribution of dust in the late-type barred spiral NGC 3488 was discovered, using mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the Sloan…
We report four trigonometric parallaxes for high-mass star-forming regions within 4 kpc of the Galactic center. These measurements were made with the VLBA as part of the BeSSeL Survey. By associating these sources kinematically with…
We present the first interferometric CO observations of the barred late-type galaxy UGC2855 and its companion UGC2866. UGC2855 is shown to belong to the rare class of galaxies with a long (~ 8kpc) continuous molecular bar. The velocity…
We use mid-infrared 3.6 and 4.5microns imaging of NGC 3906 from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) to understand the nature of an unusual offset between its stellar bar and the photometric center of an otherwise…
We present here a thorough photometric analysis of double-barred galaxies, consisting of i) two-dimensional photometric decompositions including a bulge, inner bar, outer bar, and (truncated) disc; and ii) three-dimensional statistical…
We review the present observational knowledge on the spatial distribution and the physical state of the different (molecular, atomic and ionized) components of the interstellar gas in the innermost 3 kpc of our Galaxy -- a region which we…
The central kpc of barred galaxies exhibits a wealth of morphological information on different components with clear dynamical consequences. These include nuclear rings, spirals, bars, and more. We argue that this morphology is driven by…
Using a volume- and mass-limited (D < 30 Mpc, log (M_star/M_sun) $\geq 9.75$) sample of 155 barred S0-Sd galaxies, I determine the fraction with secondary structures within their bars. Some 20 +/- 3% have a separate inner bar, making them…
The prospects for using the present-day data on metallicity of globular clusters (GCs) of the Galaxy to put constraints on the distance to the Galactic center, $R_0$, are considered. We have found that the GCs of the metal-rich and…
(abridged) By comparing the distribution of dust and gas in the central regions of the Galaxy, we aim to obtain new insights into the properties of the offset dust lanes leading the bar's major axis in the Milky Way. On the one hand, the…
Most of the observed and simulated galactic bars are symmetric in the face-on view. However, there are indeed cases of bars that are off-center with respect to the disk or have an asymmetric shape. The only well-known example showing both…