IR Star Counts in the Inner Disc

Abstract

New small-scale JH star counts are presented for 4 regions on the plane between l=31° and l=15°.The colourmagnitude diagrams clearly show that there is a major giant branch at l=27° which is not present at l=31°. The distance to this feature is about 7.5 kpc with a total extinction of A _V =7 mag. This giant branch is also seen at l=21° and l=15° and is consistent with there being a major bar at an angle of about 75° to the line of sight. At l=31° only features attributable to the disc can be seen and show that the extinction within the molecular ring is significantly higher than along the rest of the line of sight.