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How do we know it's spiral shaped though? I probably sound like a flat-earther, but the way we prove the Milky Way is spiral shaped is by traveling outside it a
by spansoa 3y ago
How do we know it's spiral shaped though? I probably sound like a flat-earther, but the way we prove the Milky Way is spiral shaped is by traveling outside it and observing its structure and shape (good luck with that).
- The_Colonel 3y agoWe can measure the distance to stars in the galaxy, that gives you model / shape.
- gus_massa 3y ago> I probably sound like a flat-earther In God we trust. All others must bring data. It's not my area, so I had to search. It's very difficult to find real data instead of nice drawings. When I was young, the Milky Way was a normal spiral galaxy, but like 5 years ago I notice it was reclasified as a barred spiral galaxy. So, there may be some surprises in the future. IIUC The idea is that we can get the directions of the stars and estimate their distance and graph them in 3D. It looks like a part of a disk with stripes. If we compare with other galaxies and numerical model, the part we see looks like a part of a barred spiral galaxy. After a long search, I found this https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/milkyway1.html https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/milkyway1.html Read the complete article because their explanantion if better (and probably more accurate) than mine. The important part is that the third image https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/images/milkyway_data_model.jpg https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/images/milkywa... has the real astromomical data (blue and red dots) and a superimposed artistic image. I'd love to see a better article with more data.