Our Milky Way Galaxy

Our Place in the Milky Way

• The naked eye Milky Way: a luminous band encircling the sky
  southern hemisphere, zoom to dark lanes
• Galileo: telescope
• Immanuel Kant
• William Hershel's model (top view)
• Harlow Shapley globular cluster distribution: on the sky, top view in 3-D space
• interstellar dust
  another example of scattering and absorption
• simulated view of Milky Way seen from outside; a possible similar galaxy

Multiwavelength Milky Way: All-Sky Views

• optical: dust-obscured
• near infrared: stars, less dust
• radio at 21 cm: neutral hydrogen atoms

Galactic Rotation Curve

• the data

Milky Way Dark Matter