A new perspective on mapping the inner Galaxy

Abstract

Due to the very strong interstellar extinction in the inner Galaxy, the stellar complexities of this region have only recently begun to be explored, with many infrared surveys now taking advantage of the reduced extinction at longer wavelengths to study the geometry, chemistry, and dynamics of the Milky Way’s innermost kiloparsecs. The new approach presented here applies the RJCE extinction correction method and the longitude-magnitude visualization technique to an extensive near+mid-infrared database (2MASS + GLIMPSE), and we assess the usefulness of this approach in exploring large-scale Galactic structure. By deriving physical parameters of the long bar and central bulge, we demonstrate this approach’s efficacy in using archived data to trace large-scale structures previously only mapped by time-intensive, dedicated surveys.