YEAR 8 TERM 3 NOTES

GALAXIES

objectives
1 .discover that galaxies contain dust gas stars and other solar system
Key words
Elliptical galaxy irregular spiral stellar dust Universe

Arrange these objects in order from the smallest to largest

Star Solar system planet galaxy moon

The Milky Way

This is a broad band of light that stretches across the sky and is
caused by the light of a very great number of faint stars.
How the milky way would look like from far away

Shapes of galaxies

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, if you look at the Milky Way from far
away it would appear spiral
Because we live in a spiral galaxy, we can only see one ‘arm’ of the spiral,
which is that band across the sky.
There are about 250 000 000 stars in the Milky Way including then Sun

There are other galaxies in the Universe besides our own.

Universe is used to describe all the space and everything in it
Some shapes of galaxies include elliptical and irregular
The closest known galaxy to the milky way is called Canis major Dwarf
Galaxy .It is elliptical in shape and a distance of 240 000 million kms
away from us.

What galaxies are made of

Galaxies are made from stellar dust ,gas ,stars and solar systems held
together by gravity
Stellar dust is the dust found in space
The Earth is travelling through a cloud of stellar dust that is estimated to
contain one dust particle in every one million m3 of space
The mass of the Milky way is estimated to be 1 500 000 000 000 times
the mass of the Sun.

How many galaxies are there

Scientists have counted the galaxies in one part of the space and multiplied
this number to estimate the number of galaxies in the universe. They got 100
000 000 000 galaxies
This value may not be accurate because
1. There could be more or less galaxies in the part of space that the
Scientists counted
2. The total volume of the Universe may not be acutely known