GALAXY

Galaxy

"Milky Way in Sagittarius" photo by B.P. Snowder

If our solar system was the size of a coffee cup, the Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of the North American Continent.
Since ancient times people have speculated about the nature of the hazy band of light that stretches around the entire sky. It is widest and brightest in the summer sky, especially in Sagittarius. There is a long twisty dark lane through Cygnus known as the Great Rift. In autumn the path winds north past Cassiopeia and Perseus, in winter past Orion, and in Spring it reaches down to the Southern Cross.
Our galaxy appears to be in the shape of a big pancake with a bulge in the middle. Our solar system is embedded inside the pancake about half way between the edge and the middle. When we try to look out along the edges we see the combined light of billions of stars. Most of those stars are too far away to pick out individually but together they added up to a milky haze.
Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The central bulge is about 16,000 light years thick. The thinner region where our solar system resides is about 3000 light years thick. Our solar system orbits around the core once every 200 million years. The total number of stars in the Milky Way is probably several hundred billion.
The core of our galaxy lies in the direction of Sagittarius. We have detected that stars in that region are circling the center at very high speed. The simplest explanation for why those stars can travel so fast without flying completely out of the galaxy is that there is a supermassive black hole in the core. The mass of the black hole is estimated at 2.7 million times the mass of the Sun.
The pancake and central bulge are only the obvious parts of the galaxy; the part that glows in the dark. There is also a part that we can't see with our eyes but can be detected by other means, directly and indirectly. We can directly measure light outside the range of human eyes, such as infrared and ultraviolet. We can also deduce where mass exists by its gravitational effect on other objects. We have concluded that the visible disk of the galaxy is surrounded by a huge sphere of material we call the halo.

"Map of the Milky Way" image by Richard Powell

One of the very visible populations in the halo is the globular clusters. These are the oldest objects made out of stars in the Universe. The globulars formed long before the birth of galaxies. When the galaxies came along, the globulars were caught by the gravity and have been orbiting around them ever since. There are about 200 globular clusters orbiting in the halo of the Milky Way.
The globular clusters were a key element in the research that revealed the size of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomer who found the key was Harlow Shapley. From his measurements of the distance to globular clusters, Shapley could see that they were not evenly distributed around our solar system. They were instead distributed around a point 30,000 light years in the direction of Sagittarius, a point we now accept as the galactic core. At that time, (early 20th century), most astronomers still thought that the Milky Way was the whole of the Universe.

from : www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/a101_milkyway.html

Our Galaxy

The Universe is a vast expanse of space which contains all of the matter and energy in existence. The Universe contains all of the galaxies, stars, and planets. The exact size of the Universe is unknown. Scientists believe the Universe is still expanding outward. They believe this outward expansion is the result of a violent, powerful explosion that occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. By looking at an object's electromagnetic spectrum, scientists can determine if an object is moving away from Earth or towards Earth.

When distant objects, such as quasars (a distant energy source which gives off vast amounts of radiation, including radio waves and X-rays), are viewed from Earth, their spectrum (a band of colors which forms when visible light passes through a prism. The band ranges in color from violet, shorter wavelength, to red longer wavelength) is shifted towards red. Whenever there is a shift in a spectrum, it is called a Doppler Shift. If the shift is toward red, the light given off by the object is in longer wavelengths. When an object moves away from Earth, the light that it is giving off is seen in longer wavelengths. When an object moves toward Earth, the light that it is giving off is seen in shorter wavelengths. This causes a shift in the object's spectrum towards violet. The amount of shift in an object's spectrum is determined by how fast the object is moving. All of the distant galaxies have tremendous red shifts. Based on these data, scientists believe the Universe is still expanding outward.


Our Sun is a star in the Milky Way Galaxy. If you were looking down on the Milky Way, it would look like a large pinwheel rotating in space. Our Galaxy is a spiral galaxy that formed approximately 14 billion years ago. Contained in the Milky Way are stars, clouds of dust and gas called nebulae, planets, and asteroids. Stars, dust, and gas fan out from the center of the Galaxy in long spiraling arms.

The Milky Way

The Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter. Our solar system is 26,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy. All objects in the Galaxy revolve around the Galaxy's center. It takes 250 million years for our Sun to pull us through one revolution around the center of the Milky Way. The stars we see over our head every night are also members of the Milky Way family.

The Big Bang

The Universe is believed to have been created about 13.7 billion years ago. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What existed prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurrence was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe.

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.




Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.
In addition to the understanding of the velocity of galaxies emanating from a single point, there is further evidence for the Big Bang. In 1964, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, in an attempt to detect microwaves from outer space, inadvertently discovered a noise of extraterrestrial origin. The noise did not seem to emanate from one location but instead, it came from all directions at once. It became obvious that what they heard was radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe which had been left over from the Big Bang. This discovery of the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion lent much credence to the Big Bang theory.

Even more recently, NASAs COBE satellite was able to detect cosmic microwaves eminating from the outer reaches of the universe. These microwaves were remarkably uniform which illustrated the homogenity of the early stages of the universe. However, the satillite also discovered that as the universe began to cool and was still expanding, small fluctuations began to exist due to temperature differences. These flucuatuations verified prior calculations of the possible cooling and development of the universe just fractions of a second after its creation. These fluctuations in the universe provided a more detailed description of the first moments after the Big Bang. They also helped to tell the story of the formation of galaxies which will be discussed in the next chapter.

The Big Bang theory provides a viable solution to one of the most pressing questions of all time. It is important to understand, however, that the theory itself is constantly being revised. As more observations are made and more research conducted, the Big Bang theory becomes more complete and our knowledge of the origins of the universe more substantial.

FROM schoolnet.gov.mt/.../The%20Universe.htm

The Milky Way Galaxy

The Milky Way galaxy is the spiral galaxy we call home, as do roughly 100 billion other stars. It looks very much like other spiral galaxies when viewed from above. There are spiral arms and a bright central part. The Sun is far from the center of the Galaxy, halfway to the edge of the Galaxy along the Orion spiral arm.
The Sun is revolving around the center of the Galaxy at a speed of half a million miles per hour, yet it will still take 200 million years for it to go around once. Do you feel like you are moving at that speed through space? If you did, you would certainly need a seat belt! When we run, we feel the wind on our bodies because there are molecules which make up the air that push against our bodies. But there are very few molecules in the space between the stars. So there is nothing to push against our planet so that we "feel" like we are rushing around at half a million miles per hour.

galaxy like the Milky Way as viewed from the top, and the actual Milky Way as viewed in the infraredClick on top image for diagram (276K JPEG)Click on bottom image for diagram (204K JPEG)European Southern Observatory & NASA COBE Project



Like other spiral galaxies, the Milky Way has a bulge, a disk, and a halo. Although all are parts of the same galaxy, each contains different objects. The halo and central bulge contain old stars and the disk is filled with gas, dust, and young stars. Our Sun is itself a fairly young star at only 5 billion years old. The Milky Way galaxy is at least 5 billion years older than that.

from http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/Milkyway.html