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Is the Milky Way circular or elliptic?

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We can't really tell. I've lost count as to how many stars have been catalogued. Judging from those stars which are visible, the best guess is that our galaxy has an elliptical shape. The Milky Way is thought to contain some 400 billion stars. read more

By the way, elliptical galaxies are ellipsoidal and each of the three principal axes can be of different size. Some of these, the E0 type are more or less spherical, but most have major and minor aces of different scale. They are flattened to various degrees due to rotation. read more

Example of spiral galaxy is the Milky Way galaxy where our Solar system is currently located according to the scientists. The considered satellite for Milky Way is letter D: Copernican Dwarf Elliptical or Sagittarius Copernican Dwarf Elliptical. read more

It stood to reason that because the Milky Way was disk-shaped and because spiral galaxies were disk-shaped, the Milky Way was probably a spiral galaxy. In the 1930s, astronomer R. J. Trumpler realized that the estimates of the size of the Milky Way galaxy by Kapetyn and others were off because the measurements had relied on observations in the visible wavelengths. read more

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Hewitt-Drew-it! PHYSICS 50.Circular/Elliptical Orbit - YouTube
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What shape is the Milky Way?
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