Small Magellanic Cloud

The Different Shapes of Galaxies

/ Emma / Leave a comment

By now, we’ve spent a heck of a lot of time exploring spiral galaxies.

It makes sense–they’re certainly the most photogenic. Seriously. Do me a favor and do a quick Google search for galaxies. When I did, nearly all the results were spirals…even though spirals are not the most common galaxies in the universe.

There is, of course, another reason we’re so familiar with spirals right now. We dipped our toes in the waters of studying galaxies by exploring our own home galaxy–a reasonable starting point. Our Milky Way just happens to be a spiral.

Well…it doesn’t “just happen” to be a spiral. But we’ll get to the reasons for that…

For now, let’s take a dive into all the different types of galaxies.

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The Milky Way Demystified

/ Emma / 7 Comments

Alright, people…time to finish off our exploration of the Milky Way Galaxy, our home in the cosmos!

For the past nine weeks, we’ve covered everything from how our galaxy was “discovered” to how it may have formed. But there’s so much more to explore–and, starting next week, we’ll begin covering the vast universe of galaxies beyond our own!

But before we do that…I want to wrap up our discussion of our own galaxy with an overview to tie the last nine posts together.

(By the way, has anyone noticed I actually managed to chug out a post a week for the entire Milky Way “module”? I’m a bit impressed with myself for that!)

Anyway…on to the Milky Way!

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How Did the Milky Way Form?

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Over the course of my last eight posts, we’ve covered just about everything there is to cover about our home galaxy–or, well, at least the basics.

We’ve explored how astronomers first discovered what that incredible, milky stream of dust across the night sky actually is. We’ve followed astronomers like the Herschels and Harlow Shapley as they tried to measure the size of our galaxy.

We’ve covered its structure–a thin disk of spiral arms, surrounded by an enormous, diffuse halo–and how truly massive this great wheel is.

We then explored those spiral arms, where all the youngest stars are–and where stars form in the first place. And we explored the chaotic nucleus at the very center of the galaxy.

Most recently, we delved into the composition of the Milky Way–that is, how much heavy elements its stars contain. We discovered that stellar compositions hint at how old certain parts of the galaxy are.

But there’s one question we haven’t answered yet, and it’s quite possibly the most important one of all.

How did the Milky Way actually become what it is today?

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