Bibcode
Martinez-Valpuesta, I.; Gerhard, O.
Bibliographical reference
Assembling the Puzzle of the Milky Way, Le Grand-Bornand, France, Edited by C. Reylé; A. Robin; M. Schultheis; EPJ Web of Conferences, Volume 19, id.06010
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2
2012
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
For some time the Milky Way has been understood as a barred disk galaxy.
Star count observations have provided evidence for two bars at
apparently different orientations, the boxy bulge and a long planar bar.
We report recent work in which we argued for a scenario where these
observations can be reproduced with a single boxy bulge/bar: an evolved
bar from the stellar disk and the corresponding boxy bulge generated
from it through secular evolution and buckling instability. We
calculated the star count distributions along different lines-of-sight
for a simulated barred galaxy and an observer at the Sun position, and
compared them with observations of red clump magnitude distributions. We
found a good agreement between the model and the observations, even
though the simulation has a single boxy bulge/bar. In this model, the
different apparent orientations of the boxy bulge and planar bar are
partially due to the volume effect and partially to the leading ends of
the bar.