Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies
Presentation by Edgar Saldivar and Tanner Bauknight
Introduction
Milky Way Galaxy
The Milky Way Galaxy is a disc that is about 120,000 light years across. The Milky Way is warped because the Large and Small Magellanic clouds have been pulling on the on the dark matter in the Milky Way. There are 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy, but because of the large size you can only see so many. The Milky Way houses the Solar System and Earth. The galactic bulge (the heart of galaxy) is in the center of the galaxy, and is full of gas, dust, and stars. The Milky Way does not sit still, but is constantly rotating. It travels at 515,000 miles per hour. Even at this rate, it would take 230 million years for the solar system to go all the way around it. Right in the middle of the galaxy, there is a gigantic black hole that is billions of times more massive than the Sun. There is also a spherical halo that surrounds the galaxy. Even though it stretches for hundreds of thousands of light years, it only has 2% the stars in the disk. Is estimated that the black matter in the galaxy makes up 90% of the mass.