SPIRAL GALAXY

                            

     SPIRAL GALAXY

A spiral galaxy is a certain kind of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, forms part of the Hubble sequence. Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disc containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as the bulge. These are surrounded by a much fainter halo of stars, many of which reside in globular clusters.

Spiral galaxies are named for the spiral structures that extend from the center into the disk. The spiral arms are sites of ongoing star formation and are brighter than the surrounding disk because of the young, hot OB stars that inhabit them.
Roughly two-thirds of all spirals are observed to have an additional component in the form of a bar-like structure, extending from the central bulge, at the ends of which the spiral arms begin. The proportion of barred spirals relative to their barless cousins has changed over the history of the Universe, with only about 10% containing bars about 8 billion years ago, to roughly a quarter 2.5 billion years ago, until present, where over two-thirds of the galaxies in the visible universe (Hubble volume) have bars.
Our own Milky Way has recently (in the 1990s) been confirmed to be a barred spiral, although the bar itself is difficult to observe from our position within the galactic disk.The most convincing evidence for its existence comes from a recent survey, performed by the Spitzer Space Telescope, of stars in the galactic center.
Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in the local Universe.They are mostly found in low-density regions and are rare in the centers of galaxy clusters.

Structure

Spiral galaxies consist of five distinct components:

A flat, rotating disc of (mostly newly created) stars and interstellar matterA central stellar bulge of mainly older stars, which resembles an elliptical galaxyA near-spherical halo of stars, including many in globular clustersA supermassive black hole at the very center of the central bulgeA near-spherical Dark matter haloThe relative importance, in terms of mass, brightness and size, of the different components varies from galaxy to galaxy.Spiral armsSpiral arms are regions of stars that extend from the center of spiral and barred spiral galaxies. These long, thin regions resemble a spiral and thus give spiral galaxies their name. Naturally, different classifications of spiral galaxies have distinct arm-structures. Sc and SBc galaxies, for instance, have very "loose" arms, whereas Sa and SBa galaxies have tightly wrapped arms (with reference to the Hubble sequence). Either way, spiral arms contain many young, blue stars (due to the high mass density and the high rate of star formation), which make the arms so bright.

Galactic bulge

A bulge is a huge, tightly packed group of stars. The term commonly refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies.
Using the Hubble classification, the bulge of Sa galaxies is usually composed of Population II stars, that are old, red stars with low metal content. Further, the bulge of Sa and SBa galaxies tends to be large. In contrast, the bulges of Sc and SBc galaxies are much smaller and are composed of young, blue Population I stars. Some bulges have similar properties to those of elliptical galaxies (scaled down to lower mass and luminosity); others simply appear as higher density centers of disks, with properties similar to disk galaxies.
Many bulges are thought to host a supermassive black hole at their centers. Such black holes have never been directly observed, but many indirect proofs exist. In our own galaxy, for instance, the object called Sagittarius A* is believed to be a supermassive black hole. There is a tight correlation between the mass of the black hole and the velocity dispersion of the stars in the bulge, the M-sigma relation.Galactic spheroidThe bulk of the stars in a spiral galaxy are located either close to a single plane (the galactic plane) in more or less conventional circular orbits around the center of the galaxy (the Galactic Center), or in a spheroidal galactic bulge around the galactic core.
However, some stars inhabit a spheroidal halo or galactic spheroid, a type of galactic halo. The orbital behaviour of these stars is disputed, but they may describe retrograde and/or highly inclined orbits, or not move in regular orbits at all. Halo stars may be acquired from small galaxies which fall into and merge with the spiral galaxy—for example, the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy is in the process of merging with the Milky Way and observations show that some stars in the halo of the Milky Way have been acquired from it.
Unlike the galactic disc, the halo seems to be free of dust, and in further contrast, stars in the galactic halo are of Population II, much older and with much lower metallicity than their Population I cousins in the galactic disc (but similar to those in the galactic bulge). The galactic halo also contains many globular clusters.

The motion of halo stars does bring them through the disc on occasion, and a number of small red dwarf stars close to the Sun are thought to belong to the galactic halo, for example Kapteyn's Star and Groombridge 1830. Due to their irregular movement around the center of the galaxy—if they do so at all—these stars often display unusually high proper motion.
In 2013 and 2014 papers were published presenting evidence that the spheroid is actually a planar structure in about half of all galaxies.

MILKY WAY

                   MILKY WAY

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky in which the naked eye cannot distinguish individual stars. The term "Milky Way" is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos, "milky circle").From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Up until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that all of the stars in the universe were contained inside of the Milky Way. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis,observations by Edwin Hubble definitively showed that the Milky Way is just one of many—now known to be billions—of galaxies.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy some 100,000–120,000 light-years in diameter, which contains 100–400 billion stars. It may contain at least as many planets as well. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 27,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust called the Orion Arm. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole.

Stars and gases at a wide range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests that much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been given the name "dark matter".The rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun. The Milky Way as a whole is moving at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to extragalactic frames of reference. The oldest known star in the Milky Way is at least 13.82  billion years old and thus must have formed shortly after the Big Bang.

Surrounded by several smaller satellite galaxies, the Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which forms a subcomponent of the Virgo Supercluster, which again forms a subcomponent of the Laniakea Supercluster.

Appearance

When observing the night sky, the term "Milky Way" is limited to the hazy band of white light some 30 degrees wide arcing across the sky. Although all of the individual stars that can be seen in the entire sky with the naked eye are part of the Milky Way Galaxy,the light in this band originates from the accumulation of un-resolved stars and other material when viewed in the direction of the Galactic plane. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift and the Coalsack, correspond to areas where light from distant stars is blocked by interstellar dust. The region where the Milky Way is self-obscuring is also known as the zone of avoidance.

The Milky Way has a relatively low surface brightness. Its visibility can be greatly reduced by background light such as light pollution or stray light from the Moon. It is readily visible when the limiting magnitude is +5.1 or better and shows a great deal of detail at +6.1. This makes the Milky Way difficult to see from any brightly lit urban or suburban location, but very prominent when viewed from a rural area when the Moon is below the horizon.
As viewed from Earth, the visible region of the Milky Way's Galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations. The center of the Milky Way lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius; it is here that the Milky Way is brightest. From Sagittarius, the hazy band of white light appears to pass westward to the Galactic anticenter in Auriga. The band then continues westward the rest of the way around the sky, back to Sagittarius. The band divides the night sky into two roughly equal hemispheres.
The Galactic plane is inclined by about 60 degrees to the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit). Relative to the celestial equator, it passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux, indicating the high inclination of Earth’s equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic, relative to the Galactic plane. The north Galactic pole is situated at right ascension 12h 49m, declination +27.4° (B1950) near β Comae Berenices, and the south Galactic pole is near α Sculptoris. Because of this high inclination, depending on the time of night and year, the arc of Milky Way may appear relatively low or relatively high in the sky. For observers from approximately 65 degrees north to 65 degrees south on Earth's surface, the Milky Way passes directly overhead twice a day.

Size and mass

The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 ly (30 kpc) in diameter, and is, on average, about 1,000 ly (0.3 kpc) thick. As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the Solar System out to Neptune were the size of a US quarter (25mm), the Milky Way would be approximately the size of the United States.
Estimates for the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used. At the low end of the estimate range, the mass of the Milky Way is 5.8×1011 solar masses somewhat smaller than the Andromeda Galaxy.Measurements using the Very Long Baseline Array in 2009 found velocities as large as 254 km/s for stars at the outer edge of the Milky Way.[36] As the orbital velocity depends on the total mass inside the orbital radius, this suggests that the Milky Way is more massive, roughly equaling the mass of Andromeda Galaxy at 7×1011 M☉ within 160,000 ly (49 kpc) of its center.A 2010 measurement of the radial velocity of halo stars finds the mass enclosed within 80 kiloparsecs is 7×1011 According to a study published in 2014, the mass of the entire Milky Way is estimated to be 8.5×1011 which is about half the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Most of the mass of the Milky Way appears to be matter of unknown form that interacts with other matter through gravitational but not electromagnetic forces, which is dubbed dark matter. A dark matter halo is spread out relatively uniformly to a distance beyond one hundred kiloparsecs from the Galactic Center. Mathematical models of the Milky Way suggest that the total mass of the entire Galaxy lies in the range 1–1.5×1012  More recent studies indicate a mass as large as 4.5×1012 and as small as 0.8×1012