Table of Contents
- 1 What is the bright light at the center of a galaxy?
- 2 What would the sky look like in the center of the galaxy?
- 3 Do all galaxies have black holes in the center?
- 4 Why do galaxies have black holes at the center?
- 5 Does dark matter affect the rotation curve of a galaxy?
- 6 Why do stars revolve around the centre of the Galaxy?
What is the bright light at the center of a galaxy?
The galaxy’s center is the bright white spot in the middle of the photo — that’s where hot massive stars crowd together. Somewhere in that center lies a supermassive black hole.
What would the sky look like in the center of the galaxy?
If you lived in the center of the Milky Way, you would look up at a sky thick with stars, up to 1 million times denser than we’re used to seeing. The closest star to our sun is about four light-years away; in the center of the galaxy, stars are only 0.4–0.04 light-years apart.
Why we Cannot see the bright center of our galaxy?
The main reason we don’t see the bright center of our galaxy, which is composed of millions of stars, is dust. Visible light is absorbed and scattered by interstellar dust, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see it on other waves of the spectrum, for example, infrared light doesn’t suffer as much because of the dust.
Is it possible to see our galaxy in the sky even though we are inside it?
The answer is no – unless you count seeing the combined light of many billions of stars. From the Northern Hemisphere, the only galaxy outside our Milky Way that’s easily visible to the eye is the great galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, also known as M31.
Do all galaxies have black holes in the center?
Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way. Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas. This chart shows the relative masses of super-dense cosmic objects.
Why do galaxies have black holes at the center?
They are believed to be at the center of every galaxy because they have such gravitational power and strength that they can pull the rest of the dust, asteroids, planets and suns close to it. Everything that is just far enough away will form the galaxy, the rest is dinner for the black hole.
Which would be expected under the presence of dark matter?
Right: Galaxy with a flat rotation curve that would be expected under the presence of dark matter. The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy’s centre.
Do spiral galaxies contain large amounts of dark matter?
Since observations of galaxy rotation do not match the distribution expected from application of Kepler’s laws, they do not match the distribution of luminous matter. This implies that spiral galaxies contain large amounts of dark matter or, in alternative, the existence of exotic physics in action on galactic scales.
Does dark matter affect the rotation curve of a galaxy?
Left: A simulated galaxy without dark matter. Right: Galaxy with a flat rotation curve that would be expected under the presence of dark matter. The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy’s centre.
Why do stars revolve around the centre of the Galaxy?
Stars revolve around their galaxy’s centre at equal or increasing speed over a large range of distances. In contrast, the orbital velocities of planets in planetary systems and moons orbiting planets decline with distance according to Kepler’s third law. This reflects the mass distributions within those systems.