What does lie at the Milky Way centre? Insights from the S2 star orbit precessionAstrophysics - Astrophysics of GalaxiesC.R. ArgüellesM.F. MestreE.A. Becerra-VergaraV. CrespiA. KrutJ.A. RuedaR. RuffiniarXivarXiv e-prints
However, our sun rotates around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at about 217 km/s, or 781,000 km/h; with an orbital period of about 225 million years. When the dinosaurs roamed on Earth, we were on the other side of the galaxy. (Many of the stars near us have...
At this point, the stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, known as the solar wind, becomes too weak to repel the oncoming stream of radiation from stars and other cosmic entities in the Milky Way. "Because the plasma inside the heliopause is of solar origin, and the plasma out...
The Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light-years wide, so light from its more distant stars can take thousands upon thousands of years to reach Earth. Glimpse that light, and you're essentially looking back in time. When astronomers measure the cosmic microwave background radiation, they ...
In other words, a galaxy 1 megaparsec away appears to be traveling away from theMilky Wayat a speed of 42 miles per second (68 km/s), while a galaxy two megaparsecs away recedes at nearly 86 miles per second (136 km/s), and so on. ...
Lurking at the center of the Milky Way is a gargantuan black hole that tips the scales at several million times the mass of the Sun. Like all black holes, this supermassive monster — called Sagittarius A* — devours anything that falls too close, including light. However, consuming material...