Edge-on, the bright thin galactic disk forms a narrow band, with a central bulge protruding above and below it and a thinner gas-and-dust lane along the midplane. Young stars and H II regions occupy a vertical scale of a few tenths of a kiloparsec or less; a broader old thick disk has scale of order a kiloparsec. These are approximate scale heights, not sharp boundaries. The old stellar halo and globular clusters form a much larger, low-surface-brightness spheroidal component, extending to many tens of kiloparsecs or more. The dark matter halo is inferred dynamically rather than directly visible in such a sketch. The preceding figure is a structural diagram, not an external photograph or a reconstruction of a particular survey.
