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Morphology of the Galactic Bulge from COBE DIRBE Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

E. Dwek
E. Dwek*
Affiliation:
Code 685, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771

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The Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on-board the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite has provided striking new images of the Galactic bulge at effective wavelengths of 1.25, 2.2, 3.5, and 4.9μ (Hauser 1993, plate 3; Arendt et al. 1994; Weiland et al. 1994). The bulge, defined here as the spheroid within the |l| < 20° and |b| < 10° region around the Galactic center, and its stellar content have been subjects of considerable interest since they contain important clues about the dynamical and star-formation history of our Galaxy. The morphology of the Galactic bulge is much harder to ascertain than that of bulges in many external galaxies, because of our location in the Galactic plane amid the obscuration by interstellar dust. In spite of this difficulty, there has recently been an accumulating body of evidence that the stellar distribution in the bulge is bar shaped, i.e. that the bulge is not rotationally symmetric in the plane of the disk (see Blitz 1993 for a review of the subject). The existence of a bar in our Galaxy would have important implications for the dynamics of the Galaxy. A bar would provide a mechanism for sweeping gas from the disk into the Galactic center “feeding” a central black hole (e.g. Shlosman, Frank, & Begelman 1989). It would also provide a mechanism for generating spiral arms, and a basis for estimating the mass of the halo relative to that of the disk (e.g. Combes & Sanders 1981 and references therein).

Type
Chapter 2: Is the Milky Way a Barred Spiral Galaxy?
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 169: Unsolved Problems of the Milky Way , 1996 , pp. 61 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1996 

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