Past exam of the short options paper shared by Prelims and Parts A and B of the physics course of the University of Oxford / 2012 / S26 / 3 / 1 / a / Solution 2026-10-25
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Face-on, the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy: a central bulge and bar of scale a few kiloparsecs lie inside a disk of stellar radius roughly , with spiral arms containing gas, dust, H II regions and young stars. Recent star formation is concentrated in molecular clouds and arm complexes. The Sun lies in the disk about from the centre in the source's convention. Old stars are also present throughout the disk, while the bulge, thick disk and extended stellar halo contain important old populations. Globular clusters occupy a roughly spheroidal halo extending well beyond the bright disk.
Figure 1.
Original schematic face-on and edge-on views of the Milky Way
. The face-on panel labels a barred centre, spiral star-forming regions, the Sun and an approximate 15 kpc bright-disk radius. The edge-on panel separates the thin dusty disk, thick disk, bulge and old halo/globular-cluster population. Halo extent is indicated schematically beyond the plotted field. Details.
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