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The Galactic Center, as seen by one of the 2MASS infrared telescopes, is located in the bright upper left portion of the image. Marked location of the Galactic Center A starchart of the night sky towards the Galactic Center. The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy.
If Newtonian mechanics is assumed to be correct, it would follow that most of the mass of the galaxy had to be in the galactic bulge near the center and that the stars and gas in the disk portion should orbit the center at decreasing velocities with radial distance from the galactic center (the dashed line in Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Geometry of the Oort constants derivation, with a field star close to the Sun in the midplane of the Galaxy. Consider a star in the midplane of the Galactic disk with Galactic longitude at a distance from the Sun. Assume that both the star and the Sun have circular orbits around the center of the Galaxy at radii of and from the Galactic Center and rotational velocities of and ...
Shapley's research marked the transition from heliocentrism to galactocentrism, [5] [6] [7] placing the Galactic Center of the Milky Way Galaxy far away from the Sun, towards Sagittarius. Heber Doust Curtis and Edwin Hubble further refuted the heliocentric view of the universe by showing that spirals are themselves far-flung galactic systems ...
The galactic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system in spherical coordinates, with the Sun as its center, the primary direction aligned with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the fundamental plane parallel to an approximation of the galactic plane but offset to its north.
The Galactic disk is surrounded by a spheroidal halo of old stars and globular clusters, of which 90% lie within 100,000 light-years (30 kpc) of the Galactic Center. [230] However, a few globular clusters have been found farther, such as PAL 4 and AM 1 at more than 200,000 light-years from the Galactic Center.
The Solar System is still the center of the coordinate system, and the zero point is defined as the direction towards the Galactic Center. Galactic latitude resembles the elevation above the galactic plane and galactic longitude determines direction relative to the center of the galaxy.
The local character of galactic rotation in the solar neighborhood is encapsulated in the Oort constants. [7] [8] [9] Structural components of the Milky Way: Using stellar kinematics, astronomers construct models which seek to explain the overall galactic structure in terms of distinct kinematic populations of stars. This is possible because ...