Evidence for a signature of the galactic bar in the solar neighbourhood

Abstract

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&#39;&#39; orbits, allowing them to erratically wander from inside the bar to regions outside the corotation, in particular through the solar neighbourhood.