  The stellar asymmetry of faint thick disk/inner halo stars in the first
quadrant first reported by Larsen & Humphreys (1996) and investigated further
by Parker et al. (2003, 2004) has been recently confirmed by SDSS (Juric et al.
2008). Their interpretation of the excess in the star counts as a ringlike
structure, however, is not supported by critical complimentary data in the
fourth quadrant not covered by SDSS. We present stellar density maps from the
Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner (MAPS) Catalog of the POSS I showing that the
overdensity does not extend into the fourth quadrant. The overdensity is most
probably not a ring. It could be due to interaction with the disk bar, evidence
for a triaxial thick disk, or a merger remnant/stream. We call this feature the
Hercules Thick Disk Cloud.

Astrophysics