The Milky Way has grown by merging with other galaxies through time. It is currently acquiring stars from a very small galaxy called the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal, as well as gobbling up material from the Magellanic Clouds. The Milky Way moves through space at a velocity of about 552 kilome...
Studying the Milky Way used to be notoriously difficult. Astronomers sometimes compare the effort to attempting to describe the size and structure of a forest while being lost in the middle of it. From our position onEarth, we simply lack an overview. But two ground-breaking space telescopes l...
MarcelC/iStock/Getty Images Shape The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with six arms, the Centaurus, the Cygnus, the Perseus, the Orion, the Carina and the Sagittarius. The arms radiate out from a central hub of millions of old stars. Earth is located on the outer edge in the Orion arm....
Is the Milky Way moving? Relative to the general expansion of space that pulls galaxies away from each other (on average), the Milky Way is moving at approximately 391 miles per second (630 kilometers per second), scientists reported on the preprint serverarXivin 2005. Our galaxy is on a...
The compact and, with $${\sim }4.3\pm 0.3\times 10^6$$ M $$_{\odot }$$ , very massive object located at the center of the Milky Way is currently the very b
There are very few images you see anywhere whether astrophotography or not that are not manipulated in some way or another. Lucky for me that I am not smart enough to care. I just like pretty pictures I can hang on my wall. Interesting side note, the image I posted above was just a ...
There are roughly100 billion planetsin our Milky Way galaxy, and while that number seems utterly incomprehensible, it starts to make more sense once the Milky Way comes into view. A trip to the Adirondack Mountains could be all any New Yorker needs to see it for themselves. ...
This has always been the way, and the Festival Director Andrew Partridge and I will be discussing the presence, absence and enduring value of short animation at our Q&A later today. But first I have to go in for my last day of duties. Firstly, herding cats at the festival jury, in ...
Milky Way Galaxy, large spiral system consisting of several hundred billionstars, one of which is theSun. It takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregularluminousband of stars and gas clouds that stretches across the sky as seen fromEarth. Although Earth lies well within the Milky Way Ga...
Astronomy - Herschel, Milky Way, Stars: Although Herschel’s discovery of Uranus made his reputation, it was far from being his most important contribution. During the 18th century, astronomers had measured the proper motions of a reasonably large number