Red clump distances to the inner Galactic structures

The least well known structure of the Galaxy is its central region, because of the high extinction, the crowding and the confusion between disk and bulge sources along the line of sight. We show how the structure of the inner Galaxy and the dust distribution can be strongly constrained by using red clump stars as distance indicator. The results of this method applied on the deep near-infrared survey of the inner Galactic bulge made with the Cambridge Infrared Survey Instrument (CIRSI) are presented.