Browsing by Author "Rich, RM"
HST proper motions on the far side of the Galactic bar-data
(MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, 2023-07-04) Soto, M; Kuijken, K; Rich, RM; Clarkson, WI; [et al.]
This is the third paper in a series that attempts to observe a clear signature of the Galactic bar/bulge using kinematic observations of the bulge stellar populations in low foreground extinction windows. We report on the detection of & SIM;100 000 new proper motions in four fields covering the far side of the Galactic bar/bulge, at negative longitudes. Our proper motions have been obtained using observations from the Advance Camera for Surveys (ACS), on board of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), with a time-baseline of 8-9 years, which has produced accuracies better than 0.5 mas yr(-1) for a significant fraction of the stellar populations with F814W < 23 mag. Interestingly, as shown in previous works, the Hess diagrams show a strikingly similar proper motion distribution to fields closer to the Galactic center and consistent with an old stellar population. The observed kinematics point to a significant bulge rotation, which seems to predominate even in fields as far as l & SIME; -8 & DEG;, and is also reflected in the changes of the velocity ellipsoid in the l, b plane as a function of distance.