Only several years ago has the view of our Galaxy as a barred spiral gained
momentum, mostly due to the work of
Blitz & Spergel (1991). They
analyzed infrared ballon observations of the Galactic center and showed
convincingly that the observed asymmetry in the Galactic longitude
distribution of surface brightness is naturally explained by the bar
with the near side in the first Galactic quadrant.
The main reason we didn't know, until only few years ago, that our
Galaxy is a barred spiral, is that we are located inside the
Galaxy. Not only that, the Galaxy is filled with interstellar gas
and dust, which prevent us from probing easily deep into the Galaxy.
The situation is better in the infrared wavelengths, where the dust is
not as opaque as in the visual regime. The infrared sattellite COBE
launched in 1989 obtained this infrared image of our Galaxy. This
edge on perspective represents the view from the vicinity of our Sun,
a star located in the Galactic disk about 30,000 light years out from the
center.
There are many places on the Web describing our Galaxy,
there are even
artistic images showing how the Milky Way could look like from
outside. However, most of them seem to ignore the fact, by now
well established, that Milky Way is a barred spiral, similar in that
to roughly 50% of all the spiral galaxies.
I started working on the Galactic bar in 1994, using the data from the OGLE project. If you want to read more about my work, please click here. However, if you are not exactly sure what the difference is between a barred and non-barred spiral, click here. To check out some other sources about our Galaxy click here.
Back to my HomepageThis page is maintained by Krzysztof Z. Stanek (kstanek@cfa.harvard.edu). It was last updated on October 2nd, 1997.