Galaxies

Parts of the Galaxy

The Galaxy
The Central Bulge
The Thin Disk
The Thick Disk
The Halo
Orbits
The Dark Halo
Star Populations

The Globular Clusters and solitary stars in the halo move in highly elliptical orbits that pass through the central bulge.

The orbits are essentially random. The halo does not rotate as a unit around the central bulge.

Since the formation of the galaxy, the tightly packed globular clusters have passed through the central bulge many hundreds of times without significant star loss due to collisions. Even in the tightly packed central bulge and the globular clusters, there is still a lot of space between the stars.


Milky Way Graphic by Lucas Leslie, Yr 9 student, ESC, May 2000