Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
We present a 3D N-body simulation of the Milky Way including 4 × 105 star- and dark-like particles and 2 × 104 gas particles, initially distributed according to an axisymmetric, observationally constrained, mass model. The whole system is self-gravitating and the gas hydrodynamics is solved using the SPH method. The simulation leads to the spontaneous formation of a central bar that strongly affects the gas dynamics. We compute (l – V) diagrams for both the gaseous and the stellar particles as a function of the angle of the bar with respect to the observer and compare the results for the gas with HI and CO observations.