The Long Bar in the Milky Way. Corroboration of an old hypothesis

Abstract

Recent GLIMPSE data have further confirmed the hypothesis of the existence of an in-plane long bar different from the bulge of the Milky Way with the same characteristics as emphasized some years ago by our team. In this paper, we present two new analyses that corroborate recent and earlier claims concerning the existence in our Galaxy of a long flat bar with approximate dimensions 7.8 kpc x 1.2 kpc x 0.2 kpc and a position angle of approximately 43 deg.: 1) star counts with 2MASS All-Sky Release and MSX data, which give an excess in the plane region along 0<l<30 deg. compared with -30 deg.<l<0, and which cannot be due to the bulge, spiral arms, a ring, or extinction; 2) new data on the distance of the long bar using the red clump method, together with recent observations of our own that are compared with our model, and that are in agreement with the long-bar scenario.