Friday, November 29, 2013

Anybody Want A Peanut? New Model Shows Tasty Orbital Shapes In Milky Way’s Bulge

Anybody Want A Peanut? New Model Shows Tasty Orbital Shapes In Milky Way’s Bulge:
Artist's impression of the Milky Way, looking at it edge on. This makes the bulge at the center look like a peanut, astronomers say. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Kornmesser/R. Hurt.
Anybody Want A Peanut? New Model Shows Tasty Orbital Shapes In Milky Way’s Bulge
Artist’s impression of the Milky Way, looking at it edge on. This makes the bulge at the center look like a peanut, astronomers say. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Kornmesser/R. Hurt.
Remember that 3-D map of the Milky Way that postulated that the center of the galaxy is shaped like a box or peanut? A new math model of the bulge shows that stars in the center of that bulge move in figure-eight orbits (which can also be interpreted as a peanut-shell shape.) Before, previous studies suggested these orbits looked more like bananas.
“The difference is important; astronomers develop theories of star motions to not only understand how the stars in our galaxy are moving today but also how our galaxy formed and evolves,” the Royal Astronomical Society stated.
In the middle of the galaxy, there are a lot of gravitational forces at play due to the sheer number of stars, as well as particles of dust and dark matter, congregating in the area. This makes it harder to model orbits than in more simple situations, such as our own solar system.
This is how a new model envisions it working:
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Read the rest of Anybody Want A Peanut? New Model Shows Tasty Orbital Shapes In Milky Way’s Bulge (206 words)

© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2013. |Permalink |No comment |
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