Madeline Horn edited One_of_the_first_questions__.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: 47120885c18f15f8f13d888b1095776ca9dbca7a

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One of the first questions that we ran into in this report was if spiral galaxies are completely round (an eccentricity of 0). This is an important question to answer because if galaxies have an eccentricity of 0, we can use the line of nodes as the semi-major major  axis. We need to know this because if spiral galaxies are not circular, we can not measure the velocities because we need to measure the velocities along the semi-major major  axis. Our conclusion after analyzing real galaxy data and computer simulations is that spiral galaxies are circular, and we can therefore use the length of the galaxy as the semi-major axis. major axis and line of nodes.