Galaxies, part 1: Crash Course Astronomy #38
The Milky Way is our neighborhood in the universe. It's a galaxy and there are many others out there. Galaxies contain gas, dust, and billions of stars or more. They come in four main shapes:...
==========
We live in a pretty cool neighborhood: the Milky Way galaxy. We’re out in the suburbs, sure, but it’s still an interesting place, buzzing with activity. Stars, nebulae, stellar clusters of various sorts, the occasional supernova. It’s a happening place. In the earliest part of the 20th century, astronomers were just starting to figure this all out. But there were a handful of objects that were puzzling: Dotting the sky here and there were faint fuzzies displaying a variety of shapes. Some were round, some elongated, and some even seemed to have spiral arms. Even with big telescopes they looked smoky, so they were simply called “nebulae.” Their existence was puzzling, though. What were they? How did they form? Were they big, small, near, far? Even...
==========
We live in a pretty cool neighborhood: the Milky Way galaxy. We’re out in the suburbs, sure, but it’s still an interesting place, buzzing with activity. Stars, nebulae, stellar clusters of various sorts, the occasional supernova. It’s a happening place. In the earliest part of the 20th century, astronomers were just starting to figure this all out. But there were a handful of objects that were puzzling: Dotting the sky here and there were faint fuzzies displaying a variety of shapes. Some were round, some elongated, and some even seemed to have spiral arms. Even with big telescopes they looked smoky, so they were simply called “nebulae.” Their existence was puzzling, though. What were they? How did they form? Were they big, small, near, far? Even...
