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The shape of the Milky Way as deduced from star counts by William Herschel in 1785. ... with estimates for its half-length and orientation spanning from 1 to 5 kpc ...
The shape of the Milky Way as estimated from star counts by William Herschel in 1785; the Solar System was assumed to be near the center. The first project to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun was undertaken by William Herschel in 1785 by counting the number of stars in different regions of the sky.
The thin disk is a structural component of spiral and S0-type galaxies, composed of stars, gas and dust. It is the main non-centre (e.g. galactic bulge) density, of such matter. That of the Milky Way is thought to have a scale height of around 300–400 parsecs (980–1,300 ly) in the vertical axis perpendicular to the disk, [1] and a scale ...
The Milky Way started out small and grew in size as it merged with other galaxies, gaining stars as well as hydrogen to form more stars. Each galaxy has hydrogen gas that aids in the birth of stars.
Andromeda Galaxy. A visible light image of the Andromeda Galaxy. Messier 32 is to the left of the galactic nucleus and Messier 110 is at the bottom right. The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It was originally named the Andromeda Nebula and is cataloged as Messier 31, M31, and NGC 224.
The Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) is an example of a disc galaxy. A galactic disc (or galactic disk) is a component of disc galaxies, such as spiral galaxies, lenticular galaxies, and the Milky Way. Galactic discs consist of a stellar component (composed of most of the galaxy's stars) and a gaseous component (mostly composed of cool gas and dust).
Galactic Center. 17 45 40.04, −29° 00′ 28.1″. The Galactic Center, as seen by one of the 2MASS infrared telescopes, is located in the bright upper left portion of the image. Marked location of the Galactic Center. The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy.
The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy's centre. It is typically rendered graphically as a plot, and the data observed from each side of a spiral galaxy are generally asymmetric, so that data from each ...