The Solar System is embedded within the galaxy. Why does the Milky Way appear as

Question

The Solar System is embedded within the galaxy. Why does the Milky Way appear

as a narrow band of light instead of appearing as faint but evenly distributed light across the entire

sky?

a. The galaxy is flattened and we view it edge-on from its interior.

b. The intense gravitational field from the central supermassive black hole has distorted

our view of the galaxy.

c. The central region of the galaxy is made up mostly of bright, young stars while the

outer regions contain mostly older and much fainter stars.

d. All of the Milky Way except the central plane is obscured from view by interstellar

dust

The Milky Way appears to us as a patchy and irregular band across the sky. What

accounts for this?

a. Stars that make up the Milky Way are unevenly distributed within the galactic disk.

b. Irregular clouds of interstellar dust block out the central regions of the galaxy from our

view.

c. The intense gravitational field from the supermassive black hole at the galactic center

has deformed the shape of space; this distorts our view of the galaxy.

d. The separate sections that we see in the Milky Way are simply the individual spiral

arms of the galaxy.

Which statement best describes the geometry of the solar system's location within the

Milky Way galaxy?

a. The plane of the solar system is coincident with the plane of the galaxy.

b. The plane of the solar system is perpendicular to that of the Milky Way.

c. The plane of the solar system is inclined at a small angle to the plane of the galaxy.

d. The angle between the plane of the solar system and the galactic plane is large but

less than a right angle.

The current Main Window view shows a gamma ray view of our galaxy. Locate our

galaxy's "hot spot" in order to determine the location of the supermassive black hole at the center

of the Milky Way. In which constellation is the galactic core of the Milky Way located?

a. Ara

b. Norma

c. Sagittarius

d. Corona A

Explanation / Answer

1)

a. Galaxy is flattened and we view it edge on, form its interior.

is correct.

Mind you the disc is about 10,000 light years thick !!

But we still see it as a relatively narrow band across the sky.

The other choices are all incorrect.

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