Milky way is a barred spiral

[ar81]

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8972222/
We already knew it was a spiral, but what we didn't know was that it was a barred spiral.

[t00fri]

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8972222/
We already knew it was a spiral, but what we didn't know was that it was a barred spiral.

In my Celestia deepsky.dsc catalog the Milky Way of course appears as Hubble type SBc, which means barred spiral of type c. I finished my catalog much before that recent NASA article

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

was published.

It is typical that popular articles rarely acknowledge any respective, very significant earlier work because of PR reasons and the ongoing struggle for money!

Better informed people, however, should not forget that there were VERY powerful infrared instuments before SPITZER already. Why was there NO mention whatsoever about COBE and 2MASS surveys and their previous strong evidences for a barred structure?

Here is an example:

http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/nov01/alard.en.shtml

Who of these so often superficial science magazine writers would even care to quote the original paper that was published from 2MASS 4 years earlier??

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0110491


Bye Fridger

[hank]

The popular article also wrongly states that the bar is at a 45 degree angle to the main plane of the galaxy. Actually, it is in the plane of the galaxy, at a 45 degree angle to the line from the sun to the center of the galaxy.

- Hank