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Two main scenarios for the formation of the Galactic bulge are invoked, the first one through gravitational collapse or hierarchical merging of subclumps, the second through secular evolution of the Galactic disc. We aim to constrain the formation of the Galactic bulge through studies of the correlation between kinematics and metallicities in Baade's Window (l=1, b=-4) and two other fields along the bulge minor axis (l=0, b=-6 and b=-12). We combine the radial velocity and the [Fe/H] measurements obtained with FLAMES/GIRAFFE at the VLT with a spectral resolution of R=20000, plus for the Baade's Window field the OGLE-II proper motions, and compare these with published N-body simulations of the Galactic bulge. We confirm the presence of two distinct populations in Baade's Window found in Hill et al. 2010: the metal-rich population presents bar-like kinematics while the metal-poor population shows kinematics corresponding to an old spheroid or a thick disc one. In this context the metallicity gradient along the bulge minor axis observed by Zoccali et al. (2008), visible also in the kinematics, can be related to a varying mix of these two populations as one moves away from the Galactic plane, alleviating the apparent contradiction between the kinematic evidence of a bar and the existence of a metallicity gradient. We show evidences that the two main scenarios for the bulge formation co-exist within the Milky Way bulge., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

In this paper we analyse the methodology to derive the bar pattern speed from dynamical simulations. The results are robust to the changes in the vertical-scale height and in the mass-to-light (M/L) ratios. There is a small range of parameters for which the kinematics can be fitted. We have also taken into account the use of different type of dynamical modelling and the effect of using 2-D vs 1-D models in deriving the pattern speeds. We conclude that the derivation of the bar streaming motions and strength and position of shocks is not greatly affected by the fluid dynamical model used. We show new results on the derivation of the pattern speed for NGC 1530. The best fit pattern speed is around 10 km/s/kpc, which corresponds to a R_cor/R_bar = 1.4, implying a slower bar than previously derived from more indirect assumptions. With this pattern speed, the global and most local kinematic features are beautifully reproduced. However, the simulations fail to reproduce the velocity gradients close to some bright HII regions in the bar. We have shown from the study of the Halpha equivalent widths that the HII regions that are located further away from the bar dust-lane in its leading side, downstream from the main bar dust-lane, are older than the rest by 1.5-2.5 Myr. In addition, a clear spatial correlation was found between the location of HII regions, dust spurs on the trailing side of the bar dust-lane, and the loci of maximum velocity gradients parallel to the bar major axis., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "Tumbling, twisting, and winding galaxies: Pattern speeds along the Hubble sequence", E. M. Corsini and V. P. Debattista (eds.), Memorie della Societa` Astronomica Italiana

(abridged) By comparing the distribution of dust and gas in the central regions of the Galaxy, we aim to obtain new insights into the properties of the offset dust lanes leading the bar's major axis in the Milky Way. On the one hand, the molecular emission of the dust lanes is extracted from the observed CO l-b-V distribution according to the interpretation of a dynamical model. On the other hand, a three dimensional extinction map of the Galactic central region constructed from near-infrared observations is used as a tracer of the dust itself and clearly reveals dust lanes in its face-on projection. Comparison of the position of both independent detections of the dust lanes is performed in the (l, b) plane. These two completely independent methods are used to provide a coherent picture of the dust lanes in the Milky Way bar. In both the gas and dust distributions, the dust lanes are found to be out of the Galactic plane, appearing at negative latitudes for l > 0 deg and at positive latitudes for l < 0 deg. However, even though there is substantial overlap between the two components, they are offset from one another with the dust appearing to lie closer to the b = 0 deg plane. Two scenarios are proposed to explain the observed offset. The first involves grain destruction by the bar shock and reformation downstream. Due to the decrease in velocity caused by the shock, this occurs at lower z. The second assumes that the gas and dust remain on a common tilted plane, but that the molecular gas decouples from the Milky Way's magnetic field, itself strong enough to resist the shear of the bar's shock. The diffuse gas and dust remain coupled to the field and are carried further downstream. This second scenario has recently been suggested in order to explain observations of the barred galaxy NGC 1097., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics letters

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 kinematics. This is then compared to the observed rotation curve, to determine the necessity of a dark halo in the inner parts (Perez et al. 2004). The azimuthally averaged radial surface brightness profiles and the integrated magnitudes obtained from ellipse fitting are given for each of the sample galaxies. The ellipse fitting technique applied to the light distribution also allowed us to obtain the size of the bar, and the inclination and position angle of the outer isophotes that allow the galaxy deprojection. Using these profiles, 1-D disk-bulge decomposition was performed to obtain the disk scale-length and the bulge effective radius for the different bands. Through the fitting of a parametric function to the observed rotation curve, the maximum rotational velocity and the corresponding radius was obtained. The correlation between the bulge and disk parameters is in agreement with previous studies (de Jong 1996a; Marquez & Moles 1999; Baggett et al. 1998). Regarding the Kormendy relation (Kormendy 1977), in agreement with de Jong, no correlation between the bulge effective radius and its surface brightness is found, possibly due to the small range of bulge magnitudes covered. We find a smaller scatter in the structural relations when compared to non-isolated samples in agreement with Marquez & Moles (1999). Finally, a correlation between the disk scale-length and the bar size is observed, possibly reflecting the rapid growth of a bar., Comment: A&A accepted. Fig. 11 and Tables 3-8 can be downloaded at: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~isa (they will also be available at http://www.edpsciences.org)

A serious candidate for dark matter in spiral galaxies are cold molecular hydrogen globules with a condensed central core and a disc-like space distribution probably similar to that of neutral hydrogen. This paper shows that the H_2 cores are sufficiently compact and massive to be detected by microlensing in the outer Galactic disc and that the Maffei 1 elliptical galaxy, at a distance of 3 Mpc and Galactic latitude b=-0.6 deg, offers an ideal target for such an experiment. The microlensing optical depth of H_2 cores along the line of sight to this galaxy is estimated to tau~0.7x10^(-6) if most of the dark mass in the Milky Way resides in such cores, and the typical event timescale to ~< 1 day. Detection rates are computed both in the classical and pixel lensing approaches in the I- and K-bands, and for a representative selection of existing observing facilities. In the more efficient pixel lensing case, two 10-hour observing runs, separated in time by at least several days, should yield of order 10 positive detections at the 5-sigma level using ground-based 8m-class telescopes in the K-band or the Hubble Space Telescope ACS camera in the I-band, and the corresponding fraction of events with timescale measurable to an accuracy better than 50% amounts to about 9% and 4% respectively for these observing alternatives., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A

This paper presents the dynamical simulations run in the potential derived from the light distribution of 5 late-type barred spiral galaxies. The aim is to determine whether the mass distribution together with the hydrodynamical simulations can reproduce the observed line-of-sight velocity curves and the gas morphology in the inner regions of the sample barred galaxies. The light distribution is obtained from the $H$-band and the $I$-band combined together. The M/L is determined using population synthesis models. The observations and the methodology of the mass distribution modelling are presented in a companion paper. The SPH models using the stellar mass models obtained directly from the $H$-band light distributions give a good representation of the gas distribution and dynamics of the modelled galaxies, supporting the maximum disk assumption. This result indicates that the gravitational field in the inner region is mostly provided by the stellar luminous component. When 40% of the total mass is transferred to an axisymmetric dark halo, the modelled kinematics clearly depart from the observed kinematics, whereas the departures are negligible for dark mass halos of 5% and 20% of the total mass. This result sets a lower limit for the contribution of the luminous component of about 80%, which is in agreement with the maximum disk definition of the stellar mass contribution to the rotation curve (about 85%$\pm$10)., Comment: 28 pages, 30 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A on 17/05/2004. High resolution figures on publication

(Abridged) The Galactic bar causes a characteristic splitting of the disc phase space into regular and chaotic orbit regions which is shown to play an important role in shaping the stellar velocity distribution in the Solar neighbourhood. A detailed orbital analysis within an analytical 2D rotating barred potential reveals that this splitting is mainly dictated by the value of the Hamiltonian H and the bar induced resonances. Test particle and N-body simulations reveal how the decoupled evolution of the disc distribution function in the two kind of regions and the process of chaotic mixing lead to overdensities in the H>H_12 chaotic part of the u-v velocity distributions outside corotation, where H_12 is the effective potential at the Lagrangian points L_1/2. In particular, for realistic space positions of the Sun near or slightly beyond the outer Lindblad resonance and if u is defined positive towards the anti-centre, the eccentric quasi-periodic orbits trapped around the stable x1(1) orbits - i.e. the bar-aligned closed orbits which asymptotically become circular at larger distances - produce a broad u<0 regular arc in velocity space extending within the H>H_12 zone, whereas the corresponding u>0 region appears as an overdensity of chaotic orbits forced to avoid that arc. This chaotic overdensity provides an original interpretation, distinct from the anti-bar elongated quasi-periodic orbit interpretation proposed by Dehnen (2000), for the prominent stream of high asymmetric drift and predominantly outward moving stars clearly emerging from the Hipparcos data. The effects of spiral arms and of molecular clouds are also briefly discussed within this context., Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures (3 in gif format). A&A, in press. Full resolution postscript paper (5Mb) and MPEG movies available at http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~fux/streams.html

The effects of the Galactic bar on the velocity distribution of old disc stars in the Solar neighbourhood are investigated using high-resolution 2D test particle simulations. A detailed orbital analysis reveals that the structure of the U-V distribution in these simulations is closely related to the phase-space extent of regular and chaotic orbits. At low angular momentum and for a sufficiently strong bar, stars mainly follow chaotic orbits which may cross the corotation radius and the U-V contours follow lines of constant Jacobi's integral except near the regions occupied by weakly populated eccentric regular orbits. These properties can naturally account for the observed outward motion of the local high asymmetric drift stars., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of "Dynamics of Star Clusters and the Milky Way", eds. S. Deiters et al., ASP Conference Series

A high-resolution N-body simulation suggests that stellar streams in the discs of barred galaxies are common and strongly time-dependent. The velocity distribution of stars in the Solar neighbourhood betray many such streams, including a stream of outward moving stars with low angular momentum. This stream is interpreted as a signature of the Galactic bar, in the sense that its stars have just enough energy (Jacobi's integral) to cross the corotation resonance., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of "Galaxy Dynamics: from the Early Universe to the Present", eds. F. Combes, G.A. Mamon and V. Charmandaris, ASP Conference Series

Self-consistent hybrid N-body and SPH simulations are used to give a new and coherent interpretation of the main features standing out from the HI and CO longitude-velocity observations within the Galactic bar. In particular, the traces of the gas associated to the Milky Way's dustlanes can be reliably identified and the 3-kpc arm appears as a gaseous stream rather than a density wave. The bar and the gaseous nuclear ring in the simulations undergo synchronised and long lived oscillations around the centre of mass, and the gas flow always remains non-stationary, suggesting a transient nature of the observed gas kinematics., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of "The Evolution of Galaxies on Cosmological Timescales", eds. J.E. Beckman and T. Mahoney, Astrophysics and Space Science

The existence of dwarf spheroidal galaxies with high internal velocity dispersions orbiting in the Milky Way raises questions about their dark matter content and lifetime. In this paper, we present an alternative solution to the dark matter dominated satellites proposed by Ibata & Lewis (1998) for the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. We performed simulations of two kinds of N-body satellites: the first models (f-models) could correspond to satellites with high dark matter content and they represent initially isolated models. The second models (s-models) have either low or negligible dark matter content and they are constructed in a tidal field. In spite of being on the same orbits, the s-models are able to produce a better agreement with some observational constraints concerning Sagittarius. From our simulations, we can also infer that Sagittarius is in the process of being disrupted., Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures; to be published in A&A

We determine the values of parameters of an N-body model for the Galaxy developed by Fux via comparison with an unbiased, homogeneous sample of OH/IR stars. Via Monte-Carlo simulation, we find the plausibilities of the best-fitting models, as well as their errors. The parameters that are constrained best by these projected data are the total mass of the model and the viewing angle of the central Bar, although the distribution of the latter has multiple maxima. The best model has a viewing angle of 44 degrees, semi-major axis of 2.5 kpc, a bar mass of 1.7E10 solar masses and a tangential velocity of the local standard of rest of 171 km/s . We argue that the lower values that are commonly found from stellar data for the viewing angle (around 25 degrees) arise when too few coordinates are available, when the longitude range is too narrow or when low latitudes are excluded from the fit. The new constraints on the viewing angle of the galactic Bar from stellar line-of-sight velocities decrease further the ability of the Bar's distribution to account for the observed micro-lensing optical depth toward Baade's window : our model reproduces only half the observed value. The signal of triaxiality diminishes quickly with increasing latitude, fading within approximately one scaleheight. This suggests that Baade's window is not a very appropriate region to sample Bar properties., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, TeX, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The gas dynamics in the Galactic disc is modeled by releasing an initially axisymmetric SPH component in a completely self-consistent and symmetry-free 3D N-body simulation of the Milky Way in which the stellar components display a COBE-like bar. The density centre of the stellar bar wanders around the centre of mass and the resulting gas flow is asymmetric and non-stationary, reproducing the HI and CO l-V diagrams only at specific times and thus suggesting a transient nature of the observed inner gas kinematics. The best matching models allow a new and coherent interpretation of the main features standing out of the l-V data within the bar region. In particular, the l-V traces of the prominent offset dustlanes leading the bar major axis in early-type barred spirals can be unambiguously identified, and the 3-kpc arm and its non-symmetric galactocentric opposite counterarm are the inner prolongations of disc spiral arms passing round the bar and joining the dustlanes at very different galactocentric distances. Bania's clump 1 and 2, and another velocity-elongated feature near l= 5.5 deg, are interpreted as gas lumps crossing the dustlane shocks. The terminal velocity peaks near l=+/- 2.5 deg are produced by gas along the dustlanes and not by the trace of the cusped x1 orbit, which passes farther away from the Galactic centre. According to these models and to related geometrical constraints, the Galactic bar must have an inclination angle of 25+/-4 deg, a corotation radius of 4.0-4.5 kpc and a face-on axis ratio b/a=0.6., Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, figure 16 in colour. A&A, in press. Full resolution paper available at http://obswww.unige.ch/Preprints/cgi-bin/Preprintshtml.cgi?#DYNAMIC and MPEG movies at http://obswww.unige.ch/~fux

New constraints on the Milky Way's bar parameters are derived from the gaseous spiral structure within the Galactic bar, and in particular from the identification of the dustlanes leading the bar major axis., Comment: 2 pages, LaTeX (paspconf.sty), 1 figure. To appear in the proceedings of "Galaxy Dynamics", conference held in Rutgers, August 1998

Using available kinematical data for a subsample of NLTT stars from the HIPPARCOS mission we confirm the existence of a previously reported local anomaly in the (u,v) plane: the mean motion u for old disc stars, with v < -30 km/s, is largely positive (+19 +/- 9 km/s w.r.t. the Galactic Center). With the use of the newest global self-consistent numerical models of our Galaxy, we show that a bar could be responsible for this observed velocity anomaly. A fraction of our stars have bar perturbed ``hot'' orbits, allowing them to erratically wander from inside the bar to regions outside the corotation, in particular through the solar neighbourhood., Comment: Letter (4 pages, 6 figures). Revised version: modifications in the text and in figure 1. Accepted for publication in A&A Letters

A new picture accounting for the dominant features in the observed l-V distribution of the Milky Way gas within the central few kpcs is proposed, based on symmetry-free and high resolution 3D N-body and SPH simulations., Comment: 2 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure. To appear in Proc. IAU Symp. 184, "The Central Regions of the Galaxy and Galaxies", ed. Y. Sofue. Part of Fux 1997, PhD thesis, Geneva Observatory. Also available at http://obswww.unige.ch/Preprints/cgi-bin/Preprintshtml.cgi?#DYNAMIC

Many 3D N-body barred models of the Galaxy extending beyond the Solar circle are realised by self-consistent evolution of various bar unstable axisymmetric models. The COBE/DIRBE K-band map, corrected for extinction, is used to constrain the location of the observer in these models, assuming a constant mass-to-light ratio. The resulting view points in the best matching models suggest that the inclination angle of the Galactic bar relative to the Sun-Galactic centre line is 28+-7 degree. Scaling the masses according to the observed radial velocity dispersion of M giants in Baade's Window, several models reproduce satisfactorily the kinematics of disc and halo stars in the Solar neighbourhood, as well as the disc local surface density and scale parameters. These models have a face-on bar axis ratio b/a=0.5+-0.1 and a bar pattern speed Omega_p=50+-5 km/s/kpc, corresponding to a corotation radius of 4.3+-0.5 kpc. The HI terminal velocity constraints favour models with low disc mass fraction near the centre. The large microlensing optical depths observed towards the Galactic bulge exclude models with a disc scale height hz<250 pc around R=4 kpc, arguing for a constant thickness Galactic disc. The models also indicate that a spiral arm starting at the near end of the bar can contribute as much as 0.5x10^(-6) to the optical depth in Baade's Window. The mass-to-K luminosity ratio of the Galactic bulge is probably more than 0.7 (Solar units), and if the same ratio applies outside the bar region, then the Milky Way should have a maximum disc., Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX, 17 figures (2 in gif format). A&A, in press. A postscript version including all figures is available at http://obswww.unige.ch/Preprints/cgi-bin/Preprintshtml.cgi?#DYNAMIC

We present a 3D N-body simulation of the Milky Way including 4*10^5 star- and dark-like particles and 2*10^4 gas particles, initially distributed according to an axisymmetric, observationally constrained, mass model. The whole system is self-gravitating and the gas hydrodynamics is solved using the SPH method. The simulation leads to the spontaneous formation of a central bar that strongly affects the gas dynamics. We compute (l-V) diagrams for both the gaseous and the stellar particles as a function of the angle of the bar with respect to the observer and compare the results for the gas with HI and CO observations., Comment: 7 pages, Latex, 6 postscript figures to append, Contribution at the IAU Colloquium 157, ``Barred Galaxies'', Tuscaloosa, 30 May-June 3, 1995