Abstract
On clear, moonless nights a nebulous band of light can be seen stretching across the sky. This is the Milky Way (Fig. 17.1). The name is used both for the phenomenon in the sky and for the large stellar system causing it. The Milky Way system is also called the Galaxy — with a capital letter. The general term galaxy is used to refer to the countless stellar systems more or less like our Milky Way.
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Further Reading
Binney, Merrifield: Galactic Astronomy, Princeton University Press 1998.
Bok, Bok: Milky Way, Harvard University Press, 5. painos 1982.
Gilmore, King, van der Kruit: The Milky Way as a Galaxy, University Science Books 1990
Mihalas, Binney: Galactic Astronomy, Freeman 1981.
Scheffler, Elsässer: Physics of the Galaxy and the Interstellar Matter, Springer 1988.
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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Karttunen, H., Kröger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen, M., Donner, K.J. (2003). The Milky Way. In: Karttunen, H., Kröger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen, M., Donner, K.J. (eds) Fundamental Astronomy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05333-1_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05333-1_17
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