Spiral Galaxies
• Opening considerations:
– Disk Stability Issues.  Most of the mass of the
galaxy is in a dark halo, and stars are treated as
particles in the overall potential, so should disks
even be stable?
– Note that nearby interactions are unimportant:
Trelax/tc = (h/R)(N/(8logN)) – “collisionless” if
large.  For N = 1011, the ratio of relaxation to
crossing time is about 108.