spiral
In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point.
Helices
Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:S0-type galaxies, composed of
star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...
s, gas and
dust
Dust is made of fine particles of solid matter. On Earth, it generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil lifted by wind (an aeolian process), volcanic eruptions, and pollution. Dust in ...
. It is the main non-centre (e.g. galactic bulge) density, of such matter. That of the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
is thought to have a scale height of around in the vertical axis perpendicular to the disk, and a scale length of around in the horizontal axis, in the direction of the radius. For comparison, the Sun is out from the center. The thin disk contributes about 85% of the stars in the Galactic plane and 95% of the total disk stars. It can be set apart from the thick disk of a galaxy since the latter is composed of older population stars created at an earlier stage of the galaxy formation and thus has fewer heavy elements. Stars in the thin disk, on the other hand, are created as a result of gas accretion at the later stages of a galaxy formation and are on average more metal-rich.
The thin disk contains stars with a wide range of ages and may be divided into a series of sub-populations of increasing age. Notwithstanding, it is considered to be considerably younger than the thick disk.
Based upon the emerging science of nucleocosmochronology, the Galactic thin disk of the Milky Way is estimated to have been formed 8.8 ± 1.7 billion years ago. It may have collided with a smaller satellite galaxy, causing the stars in the thin disk to be shaken up and creating the thick disk, while the gas would have settled into the galactic plane and reformed the thin disk.
See also
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Disc galaxy
A disc galaxy (or disk galaxy) is a galaxy characterized by a galactic disc, a flattened circular volume of stars. These galaxies may or may not include a central non-disc-like region (a galactic bulge).
Disc galaxy types include:
* Spiral g ...