Why is the Milky Way shaped like a disk?
Galaxies are disc shaped because they are gas rich and dynamically young. Stars are also gas rich but they are dynamically old so they have had time to rid themselves of their discs. Young protostars (which are dynamically young) are surrounded by proto-stellar discs.
Is Milky Way 2D or 3D?
Hence making a 2D disk shapped galaxy. Now since the dark matter particles are collisionless they remain in 3D elliptical shape as we understand they should. So a combined, spiral galactic shape is, visible 2D disk shapped stucture and eliptical invisible structure.
Is the Milky Way shaped like a sphere?
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is disk-shaped with spiral arms. It has an elliptical bulge in the centre and a spherical halo that is denser closer to the Galaxy centre. It is about 100,000 light years across and our solar system is about two thirds of the way out from the centre.
Are galaxies 2D?
Why the galaxies form 2D planes (or spiral-like) instead of 3D balls (or spherical-like)? Question: As we know, (1) the macroscopic spatial dimension of our universe is 3 dimension, and (2) gravity attracts massive objects together and the gravitational force is isotropic without directional preferences.
What is difference between Milky Way and galaxy?
What is the difference between the Milky Way and the Milky Way Galaxy? And the answer was: The Milky Way is a fairly narrow band of faint diffuse light around the celestial sphere. The Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy of about 100 billion stars.
Is the Milky Way spiral or elliptical?
The concentration of stars in a band adds to the evidence that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. If we lived in an elliptical galaxy, we would see the stars of our galaxy spread out all around the sky, not in a single band. An all-sky image shows the flat plane of the Milky Way galaxy.
What is the difference between a galaxy and Milky Way?
A galaxy is a large group of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Do stars in the Milky Way galaxy come from the disk?
And some do in fact: the halo stars, including but not limited to the globular clusters. These are all very old stars, formed when the gas of the galaxy hadn’t settled into the disk yet (or, for a few, formed in the disk but later ejected due to gravitational disturbances).
Why are globular clusters round if the Milky Way is flat?
Why are the globular clusters tracing out a round, spherical distribution on the sky if the Milky Way itself appears to be a flattened plane? The answer is that the Milky Way is actually a little of both! If we use a different type of object to trace the structure of the Milky Way, we find a different size and shape.