Nuclear Bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy. In this exercise you can use Starry Night Enthusiast™ to determine the width of the Galaxy’s nuclear bulge. You will need a ruler. Select Favourites  Deep Space...

Nuclear Bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy. In this exercise you can use Starry Night Enthusiast™ to determine the width of the Galaxy’s nuclear bulge. You will need a ruler. Select Favourites
 Deep Space Milky Way
 The Milky Way from the menu. Click the Stop button in the toolbar to stop time flow. The nuclear bulge of the Galaxy is the bright central region that extends above and below the plane of the Galaxy. The position of the Sun in the Milky Way is labeled. Use the Location Scroller (hold down the Shift key and mouse button while moving the mouse) to adjust the view so that the Milky Way appears edge on. With the Galaxy edge-on, rotate it until the Sun’s neighborhood appears as far to the right or left of the center of the Galaxy as it will go. Re-center the Galaxy, if necessary, using just the hand tool. Make a drawing to scale or a tracing of the edge view of the Galaxy. Be careful not to harm your computer screen if you trace from it or measure from it. Mark especially the points where the bulge meets the disk and the location of the solar system. Now determine the distance from the center of the Galaxy to the solar system (see Figure 15-11 or the previous Starry Night Enthusiast™ exercise above). With this distance as a reference, determine the radius of the nuclear bulge (center of the Galaxy to the edge of the nuclear bulge). Calculate over what fraction of the Galaxy’s visible diameter the nuclear bulge extends. Measure how many light years the solar system is from the edge of the nuclear bulge.

Figure 15- 11