If the center of the Milky Way were a city, we would be living in suburbia, about 25,000 to 30,000 light-years from the city center. Life in the outskirts is good; we find ourselves nestled in one of the smaller neighborhoods, the Orion-Cygnus Arm, sandwiched between larger Perseus an...
This material absorbs visible light, making fainter objects difficult to see in optical wavelengths. Luckily, advances in infrared astronomy have enabled surveys of the Milky Way that have revealed things that would otherwise remain invisible to us. For more than 13 years, an international team of...
The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years from edge to edge. If a rocket could travel at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. By comparison, light can go from Earth to the moon in just one second.[2] Hubble is considered one of the most importan...
Size and Shape of the Milky Way The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy comprising an estimated 200 billion stars (some estimates range as high as 400 billion) arrayed in the form of a disk, with a central elliptical bulge (some 12,000 light-years in diameter) of closely packed ...
Size and composition[] Schematic illustration showing the galaxy in profile. The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 69 in diameter, and is, on average, about 69 thick.[11] As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if it were reduced to 69 in diamete...
The Cherry Springs Star Party is an annual astronomy event held in Coudersport, PA. This incredible gathering of amateur astronomers always coincides with the new moon for truly breathtaking views of the Milky Way. The lack of light pollution in this area is the reason for a truly unforgettable...
JERUSALEM, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Astronomers have found BH3 is by far the heaviest known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, 33 times the mass of the Sun. An international research team found the black hole when looking into the latest data group recorded in the European Space Age...
This map shows the full extent of the Milky Way galaxy - a spiral galaxy of at least two hundred billion stars. Our Sun is buried deep within the Orion Arm about 26 000 light years from the centre. Towards the centre of the Galaxy the stars are packed together much closer than they ar...
inMilky Way Galaxy Also known as: The Galaxy Written by Paul W. Hodge Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle. Author ofThe Andromeda Galaxy;Higher then Everest: An Adventurer's Guide to the Solar System; and others. ...
Thickness of the Galaxy at the Sun 2000 light years Velocity of Sun around the Galaxy 220 km/s Orbital period of Sun around the Galaxy 225 million yearsBelow - four galaxies which look like the Milky Way. NGC 3953 (top left) is 55 million light years away and 95000 light years in diam...