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The 3D Structure of the Galactic Bulge from the MACHO Red Clump Stars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2016

R. Fux
Affiliation:
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra ACT 2611, Australia
T. Axelrod
Affiliation:
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra ACT 2611, Australia
P. Popowski
Affiliation:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA 94551, USA

Extract

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Many evidences demonstrate that the Milky Way is a barred galaxy with the near end of the bar pointing in the first Galactic quadrant (e.g. Gerhard 1999 for a review), thus offering an exceptional chance to study the detailed three-dimensional structure and dynamics of a real bar. One of the best tracer of the Galactic bulge/bar are the red clump stars: they are very numerous, sufficiently bright to be detected throughout the bulge, and their absolute I-magnitude has an intrinsic dispersion of only 0.2 magnitude, with a mean value almost independent of colour and metallicity (Paczyński & Stanek 1998, Udalski 2000). Here we outline an ongoing project aiming to recover the 3D bulge stellar distribution as primarily traced by these stars, as in Stanek et al. (1997), but in a non-parametric way and from the VR database of the MACHO experiment within an almost fully observed ∼ 8° × 8° bulge area centred on (l, b) ≈ (4°, − 6°) (e.g. Alcock et al. 1997), soon complemented with I-band photometry.

Type
The Inner Regions of Galaxies
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2001 

References

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