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Red clump giant stars as tracers of Galactic structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

M. López-Corredoira
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofí sica de Canarias, La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain)
A. Cabrera-Lavers
Affiliation:
GRANTECAN, La Palma (Spain)
P. L. Hammersley
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofí sica de Canarias, La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain)
F. Garzón
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofí sica de Canarias, La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain) Departamento de Astrofí sica, Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain)
T. J. Mahoney
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofí sica de Canarias, La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain)
C. González-Fernández
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofí sica de Canarias, La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain)
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Abstract

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By isolating the red clump giant population in the color-magnitude diagrams and inverting their star counts, we can obtain directly the density distribution of the old stellar population along the line of sight. We have applied this method to several near infrared surveys and obtained information on the disc, bulge and long bar. The disc is well fitted by an exponential distribution in both the galactocentric distance and height, flared and warped in the outer parts, and with a deficit of stars in the inner in-plane regions. The long bar occupies these in-plane regions within R < 3.9 kpc, with approximate dimensions of 7.8 kpc × 1.2 kpc × 0.2 kpc and a position angle of 40-45 deg. The bulge is a triaxial structure, possibly boxy, thicker and shorter than the long bar and with position angle of 10-30 deg.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2010

References

López-Corredoira, M., Cabrera-Lavers, A., Garzón, F., & Hammersley, P. L. 2002, A&A 394, 883Google Scholar
López-Corredoira, M., Cabrera-Lavers, A., Gerhard, O. E., & Garzón, F. 2004, A&A 421, 953Google Scholar
Cabrera-Lavers, A., Bilir, S., Ak, S., Yaz, E., & López-Corredoira, M. 2007a, A&A 464, 565Google Scholar
Cabrera-Lavers, A., Hammersley, P. L., González-Fernández, C., López-Corredoira, M., Garzón, F., & Mahoney, T. J. 2007b, A&A 465, 825Google Scholar