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What is the basic structure of our Milky Way, a spiral galaxy? Adding to qualitative description...

What is the basic structure of our Milky Way, a spiral galaxy?
Adding to qualitative description with plot, explain important quantitative properties of the Milky Way.

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The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy comprising an estimated 200 billion stars (some estimates range as high as 400 billion) arrayed in the form of a disk, with a central elliptical bulge (some 12,000 light-years in diameter) of closely packed stars lying in the direction of Sagittarius.

The Milky Way is actually a galaxy -- a large system of stars, gas (mostly hydrogen), dust and dark matter that orbits a common center and is bound together by gravity. Our galaxy is spiral-shaped.

This structure can be viewed as consisting of six separate parts: (1) a nucleus, (2) a central bulge, (3) a disk (both a thin and a thick disk), (4) spiral arms, (5) a spherical component, and (6) a massive halo. Some of these components blend into each other. Three views of the Milky Way Galaxy.

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