JK photometry in BUL_SC9 and BUL_SC29

So far the only bulge region where deep color-magnitude diagrams have been obtained is indeed along the minor axis. To overcome this limitation, we aim to age-date the bulge stellar populations far away from the bulge minor axis.

Color-magnitude diagrams and luminosity functions have been obtained from deep near-IR VLT/HAWK-I images taken at the two Southern corners of the boxy bulge, i.e., near the opposite edges of the Galactic bar. The foreground disk contamination has been statistically removed using a pure disk field observed with the same instrument and located approximately at similar Galactic latitudes of the two bulge fields and ~30{deg} in longitude away from the Galactic center.