The Milky Way is Like NGC 4594 (IMAGE)

University of Copenhagen

The Milky Way is Like NGC 4594

Caption

The Milky Way is like NGC 4594 (pictured), a disc shaped spiral galaxy with around 200 billion stars. Above and below the galactic plane there is a halo, which includes older stars dating back to the galaxy’s childhood billions of years ago. In principle they should all be primitive and poor in heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium. New research shows that the explanation lies in violent jets from exploding giant stars.

Credit

Hubble Telescope

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Hubble Telescope

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