The Milky Way is just an average spiral

Abstract

It has been thought for many years that the Milky Way is an overly large spiral galaxy. Using Cephied distances to 17 spiral galaxies we calculate the true linear diameters of those galaxies. These diameters are then compared to that of the Milky Way which is found to be, at most, an averagely sized spiral galaxy. When compared to galaxies of approximately the same Hubble type ($2<T<6$) the Milky Way is found to be slightly undersized. This suggests that the Hubble parameter is at the lower end of the currently accepted range of possibilities.

4 pages LaTeX file with 2 figures incorporated. Also available by e-mailing spg, or by ftp from ftp://star-www.maps.susx.ac.uk/pub/papers/spg/size.ps.Z