Milky Way Halo
Milky Way Halo
| Group Name | halo |
| Reference | Merrifield, M. & Binney, J. 1998, Galactic Astronomy (Princeton: Princeton University Press) |
| Prepared by | Brian Abbott (AMNH/Hayden) |
| Labels | No |
| Files | halo.speck |
| Dependencies | none |
The Milky Way is surrounded by a large, spherical halo. The most prominent objects in this halo are the globular clusters, the bright, compact star clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars. The halo is also filled with dimmer, cooler stars that formed around the time the Galaxy was forming. We include the halo here to see its scale among our neighboring galaxies. It is 41,000 parsecs, or about 134,000 light-years, in radius. For more information about our Galactic halo, see “The Galactic Halo” in the Milky Way Atlas chapter.
© 2002-2005 American Museum of Natural History
Last Modified: 2007-12-19 by Brian Abbott