What causes a barred spiral galaxy?

Bars form when stellar orbits in a spiral galaxy become unstable and deviate from a circular path. “The bar becomes even stronger as it locks more and more of these elongated orbits into place. Eventually a high fraction of the stars in the galaxy’s inner region join the bar.”

What is in the middle of a spiral galaxy?

Most spiral galaxies contain a central bulge surrounded by a flat, rotating disk of stars. The bulge in the center is made up of older, dimmer stars, and is thought to contain a supermassive black hole. The disk of stars orbiting the bulge separates into arms that circle the galaxy.

How many black holes are there?

So in our region of the Universe, there are some 100 billion supermassive black holes. The nearest one resides in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 28 thousand lightyears away. The most distant we know of lives in a quasar galaxy billions of lightyears away.

What is inside galaxy Bar?

A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in about half of all spiral galaxies. Bars generally affect both the motions of stars and interstellar gas within spiral galaxies and can affect spiral arms as well.

Is Milky Way a barred galaxy?

The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Is the Large Magellanic Cloud visible?

For observers south of about 20 degrees south latitude, the Large Magellanic Cloud is circumpolar, meaning that it can be seen (at least in part) all night every night of the year, weather permitting. In the Northern Hemisphere, only observers south of about 20 degrees north latitude can ever see it at all.

Do all galaxies have black holes in the center?

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way. Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas. This chart shows the relative masses of super-dense cosmic objects.