Garzón et al .
( 1997 ) , López-Corredoira et al .
( 1999 ) and Hammersley et al .
( 2000 ) have identified in TMGS and DENIS data a large excess of stars at l=27 ^ { \circ } and b=0 ^ { \circ } which might correspond to an in-plane bar .
We compared near infrared CAIN star counts and simulations from the Besançon Model of Galaxy on 15 fields between 15 ^ { \circ } and 45 ^ { \circ } in longitude and -2 ^ { \circ } and 2 ^ { \circ } in latitude .
Comparisons confirm the existence of an overdensity at longitudes lower than 27 ^ { \circ } which is inhomogeneous and decreases very steeply off the Galactic plane .
The observed excess in the star distribution over the predicted density is even higher than 100 % .
Its distance from the sun is estimated to be lower than 6 kpc .
If this overdensity corresponds to the stellar population of the bar , we estimate its half-length to 3.9 \pm 0.4 kpc and its angle from the Sun-center direction to 45 \pm 9 degrees .