Just take a right at Messier 103

We are bounded in a nutshell of Infinite space: Blog Post #3, Worksheet # 1.2: Just take a right at Messier 103

Here we will be looking at views of the Milky Way Galaxy, the only home our home has ever known. First from the top and then from the side view. The Milky Way exhibits what astronomers refer to as a Spiral Galaxy, in part because its arms (marked on the top view map) exhibit a spiral shape that extends throughout the entire arm. This shape is actually very similar to the geometric figure called a Fibonacci Spiral, a figure whose sides are dictated by a sequence of numbers where the previous number is added to the present one to make the next term (but more on this in the links).

Top View of the Milky Way

Some of the key features of the Milky Way as seen from the top:

• ·  Spiral arms: The Norma Arm, the Sagittarius Arm (whose Orion Spur is where our Solar System resides), the Perseus Arm, the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, and the Outer Arm.
•     The galaxy also has the Near 3kpc (kilo-parsec) Arm and the Far 3kpc Arm, which are the two arms very close to the inner bars (large groupings of stars) of the galaxy.
• ·  Black Hole: Sgr A*, the center of our galaxy, a supermassive black hole
• ·  Our Sun is located in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Arm, 8 kpc from the center of the galaxy
• ·  Orion Nebula: This stellar beauty is an area of star formation where gases and basic atoms mix and bind to begin fusion and give birth to stars
• ·  Hyades: The nearest open cluster of stars ( a group of close stars born from the same molecular cloud) to the Sun
• ·   Messier 103: One of the farthest recorded open clusters (although many more are believed to exist) that sits on the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way
• ·  The length (and approximately its width) of our galaxy is 30 kpc

Side View of the Milky Way

Some of the key features of the Milky Way as seen from the top:

• ·  The Bulge: An area of the Milky Way near the center which amasses an immense quantity of stars and other bright objects in the Milky Way.
• ·  Thin Disk: Found near the center of the galaxy, both horizontally and vertically, this disk has the majority of the young stars of the galaxy, closer to the areas that are still ripe with stellar formation.
• ·  Thick Disk: Seen as an outer shell of the galaxy, this disk houses most of the old stars and moves relatively quicker than the center and thin disk of the galaxy.
• ·  The Halo: The lighter area above and below the main structure of the Milky Way is actually composed of stars that are farther away than most.
• ·  The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC): A dwarf galaxy close to the Milky Way, this structure is thought to have had a more regular structure until the gravity of the Milky Way distorted it.
• ·   The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC): This is also a satellite galaxy near the Milky Way, but it is actually considered the fourth largest galaxy in our local group of galaxies, a way astronomers organize where galaxies are among other galaxies.
• ·  Globular Clusters: These are dense groupings of stars scattered across the Milky Way and its halo, extremely bright because of this dense packing due to similar place of origin and gravity.
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References:

• Milky Way Structure (Our Sun, the Arms, Sgr A*): http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/1925-ssc2008-10b-A-Roadmap-to-the-Milky-Way-Annotated- http://galaxymap.org/drupal/node/171 http://earthsky.org/space/does-our-sun-reside-in-a-spiral-arm-of-the-milky-way-galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/milkyway/components.html
• Side View Structure of the Milky Way: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mlmc2/M31thickdisc.html http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/T/thick+disk http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/milkyway/components.html
• LMC and SMC: http://www.constellation-guide.com/large-magellanic-cloud/ http://www.astr.ua.edu/gifimages/lmc_smc.html http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/3-d-mapping-of-large-magellanic-cloud/
• Orion Nebula: https://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0349.html https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/formation_of_stars/
• Globular Clusters: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/globular.html http://messier.seds.org/glob.html http://spider.seds.org/spider/MWGC/mwgc.html
• Open Clusters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyades_(star_cluster) http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/index.php?c=152&p=464 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_103 http://www.starobserver.eu/openclusters/m103_files/m103_where_is.jpg_1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_cluster http://www.univie.ac.at/webda/recent_data.html
• Milky Way Size: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/milkyway_info.html https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/howfar/across.html
• Fibonacci and his Spirals: http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680/Simmons/Essay1/6690ProjectFibonacciF.htm