[142.04] Evidence that the Milky Way stellar spheroid is triaxial

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 142 Galactic Structure, Halo and High Velocity
Poster, Thursday, January 13, 2005, 9:20am-4:00pm, Exhibit Hall

Previous | Session 142 | Next

[142.04] Evidence that the Milky Way stellar spheroid is triaxial

H. J. Newberg (Rensselaer), B. Yanny (Fermilab)

We show star counts of spheroid stars over 5000 square degrees of sky from the SDSS DR3. The star counts are not symmetric about a Galactic longitude of zero degrees, at least out to 20 kpc from the Galactic center. The star counts are consistent with symmetry about a Galactic latitude of zero degrees. The best fit triaxial halo gives a major axis of the spheroid in the Galactic plane and roughly perpendicular to the Galactic bar. This research is funded by NSF, Research Corporation, and Fermilab DOE, using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Previous | Session 142 | Next