Week 6 Assignments
Discussion Questions - Week 6 (3 pts)

1. Describe in your own words the various components in the Milky Way galaxy, and list the features associated with each component.
2. Describe how astronomers use Newton’s and Kepler’s laws of gravity to measure the mass distribution (amount of mass versus distance to the center) in our galaxy.
3. Relate the evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that almost all large galaxies (at least) have supermassive black holes (at least one) at (or near) galactic center. The APOD site has lots of examples of these kinds of observations - use the "search" function at the site to look for "supermassive black hole".