Astronomy › Section S · The Milky Way › Topic S.1
The architecture of the galaxy
We live inside the Milky Way, which makes it the hardest galaxy of all to map. Star counts, variable stars and infrared light eventually revealed a thin spinning disc, a bar-shaped bulge and a vast halo, with the Sun far out from the centre.
In this topic
- Mapping a city from one street corner
- The Herschels count stars
- Shapley finds the centre
- Worked example: a globular cluster and the dust trap
- The thin disc
- Worked example: how flat is the galaxy?
- The thick disc, the bar and the bulge
- The stellar halo and beyond
- Seeing through the dust
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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