Our galaxy

[Orrex]

I heard an off-hand reference the other day to the recent realization that our galaxy is in fact bar-type, rather than spiral.

Is this correct?

[mainegreen]

1. I thought it was a mix-type

But having never seen it myself.. :shrug:

[Orrex]

2. What about nougat? Is there nougat?

If not, then I'm not interested.

Actually, the only reason I ask is that this was the very first time I'd heard about it. I'm not the brightest star in the universe, but I try to stay current on layman-available astronomical news.

But this news really knocked my socks off.

[mainegreen]

3. I had read this article on space.com

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050816_milky_way.html

It talks about this idea. Even has a great picture. I love space.com.

Plus: stop talking about nougat. Your making me hungry.

[frogmarch]

4. Thanks for the article link

After reading it, I read the articles linked at the bottom of it, including the excellent Space.com article "New Simulation Builds Milky Way From Dawn of Universe."

I was already interested in the bars observed at the centers of galaxies, so I thought it was a fascinating article. It included a cool link. The link is to the homepage of research scientist, Dr. Laura Wright, who in her words, is "studying the possible mechanisms for the formation of galaxies similar to the Milky Way using computer simulations." If you click the image on her page, you can see the simulation, which shows the formation of bars.

Here is the link to her page.

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~ljw/work/

[mainegreen]

5. Thats quit a neat animation

I love how simple physics, simple math can take total chaos and *poof*! Order!

[Odin2005]

7. Intresting Illistration.

So instead of many spiral arms, they musy now think that it has 2 arms that branch out.

[Odin2005]

6. The Milky Way is a Barred Spiral.

Which means the dence concentration of stars near the galactic center (the galactic nucleus, is elongated into a bar, with the spiral arms emerging from the ends of the bar.