Related papers: A Self-Consistent Dynamical Model for the {\sl COB…
Microlensing provides a unique tool to break the stellar to dark matter degeneracy in the inner Milky Way. We combine N-body dynamical models fitted to the Milky Way's Boxy/Peanut bulge with exponential disk models outside this, and compute…
This is the first paper presenting our long-term project aimed at studying the nature of bulges through the analysis of their stellar population gradients. We present deep spectroscopic observations along the minor axis and the data…
Schwarzschild's orbit-superposition technique is the most developed and well-tested method available for constraining the detailed mass distributions of equilibrium stellar systems. Here I provide a very short overview of the method and its…
We present a study of the luminosity density distribution of the Galactic bar using number counts of red clump giants (RCGs) from the OGLE-III survey. The data were recently published by Nataf et al. (2013) for 9019 fields towards the bulge…
Non-uniqueness of deprojecting the integrated light distribution of a nearby or faraway triaxial body is reviewed in the context of deriving the volume density of the Galactic bar from the COBE/DIRBE maps of the Galactic plane. The exact…
A dynamic model of the Galaxy is constructed based on kinematic data for masers with trigonometric parallaxes. Maser data is used to compute the model potential in the Galactic plane. The potential is then generalized to three dimensions…
Results from the modelling of bars in nearly 300 galaxies are used to test predictions from theoretical work on the evolution of bars. Correlations are found between bar ellipticity and boxiness, between bar strength and normalised size,…
We show that current microlensing and dynamical observations of the Galaxy permit to set interesting constraints on the Dark Matter local density and profile slope towards the galactic centre. Assuming state-of-the-art models for the…
We present the first study of bars in the local Universe, based on the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey (SDSS). The large sample of ~5000 local galaxies provides the largest study to date of local bars and minimizes the effect of cosmic variance.…
The MACHO Project monitors millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the bulge of the Milky Way searching for the gravitational microlensing signature of baryonic dark matter. This Project has yielded…
The dynamical stability and evolution of disc galaxies with different disc thickness as well as various fraction and concentration of stellar counter-rotation is investigated with self-consistent numerical simulations. In particular,…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
Recent data from the VVV survey have strengthened evidence for a structural change in the Galactic bulge inwards of |l|<=4 deg. Here we show with an N-body barred galaxy simulation that a boxy bulge formed through the bar and buckling…
We describe a real-time spectroscopic program to observe bright gravitational microlensing events toward the Galactic Bulge. The program is carried out using the NTT at ESO. We present the preliminary analysis of the microlensing events we…
The majority of massive disk galaxies, including our own, have stellar bars with vertically thick inner regions -- so-called "boxy/peanut-shaped" (B/P) bulges. The most commonly suggested mechanism for the formation of B/P bulges is a…
This paper presents surface photometry (B,V, I, J, H, K) and H_alpha rotation curves of 27 isolated spiral galaxies. The final goal is to obtain the mass distribution of a sample of isolated spiral galaxies in order to model their gas…
We study evolution of galactic bars using suite of very high-resolution zoom-in cosmological simulations of galaxies at z ~ 9-2. Our models were chosen to lie within similar mass DM halos, log(Mvir/Mo) ~ 11.65 +- 0.05, at z=6, 4, and 2, in…
The strong time-dependence of the dynamics of galactic bars yields a complex and rapidly evolving distribution of dense gas and star forming regions. Although bars mainly host regions void of any star formation activity, their extremities…
The inner ~200 pc region of the Milky Way contains a nuclear stellar disc and a nuclear star cluster that are embedded in the larger Galactic bar. These stellar systems overlap spatially, which makes it challenging to separate stars that…
We study dynamics of bars in models of disk galaxies embeded in realistic dark matter halos. We find that disk thickness plays an important, if not dominant, role in the evolution and structure of the bars. We also make extensive numerical…