Galactic Gas

Recent observation by astronomers at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories on the inner part of the Milky Way may furnish new insight into the forces that rotate galaxies. Stars apparently move at different speeds from those of gas clouds in the same region Previously it had been thought that the gas and stars rotated together At 20,000 light years from the centre of our galaxy, stars move faster than the hydrogen clouds near them; at 13,000 light years they move more lowly. Comparative studies of these rate of rotation should provide a better understanding of galactic dynamics.

Further details of gas motion have been discovered in the Great Nebula in Andromeda. Huge lumpy clouds appear to be streaming outwards from the centre of this galaxy at about 150,000 miles per hour. Dutch astronomers have suggested that these outrushing streams are fed by gas pouring in from the corona—a ball of tenuous hydrogen that seems to envelop the galaxy.