Evidence for the Galactic Bar from the Two Color Photometry of the Bulge Red Clump Stars

Abstract

The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE, Udalski et al.~1994a; Paczyński et al.~1994b -- these proceedings; and references therein) is an extensive photometric search for the rare cases of gravitational microlensing of Galactic bulge stars by foreground objects. It provides a huge data base (Szymański \& Udalski 1993), from which color-magnitude diagrams have been compiled (Udalski et al.~1993, 1994b). Here we discuss the use a of well-defined population of bulge red clump stars to investigate the presence of the bar in our Galaxy. The results of our earlier studies are described by Stanek et al.~(1994).