Abstract details

Lately, the inner structure of the Milky Way has becomed a hot topic, specially concerning the differenciation/presence of a bulge/bar complex. TCS-CAIN has been a very productive effort in this field, allowing us to postulate the presence of a long flat bar (Hammersely et al., 1994, Hammersley et al., 2000) and a triaxial bulge (Lopez-Corredoira et al. 2000) from the examination of infrared stellar counts obtained with the TCS (1.5m, Tenerife). Recently, these results have been confirmed by the GLIMPSE team (Benjamin et al., 2005). But the field is still open, since there is no celar evidence of the long bar and the bulge being two totally diferent components or just different geometric structures of the same entity. In an effort to clarify this point, we have started an ambitious observational program with the TNG telescope,to obtain a statistically significant number of low resolution (R=500) spectra; observing the CaI, NaI and CO bandhead features (Ramirez et al., 1997) we can identify the spectral type of the star and even further obtain a measure of its metallicity, thus giving hints of the populations and chemical composition of the inner parts of the Milky Way. The final aim of this follow-up is to become a central observational program to be acomplished with EMIR, for with its MOS features, is possible to obtain a huge number of spectra (we aim for over 1000)with moderate resolution, constructing a significant sample of the populations present, and hence the properties of the structures they belong to.