The Milky Way is part of a collection of galaxies called the Local Group. We’re on a collision course with the most massive and largest member of that collection, which is the Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31). The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy (...
Why Is Our Galaxy Called the Milky Way? The truth is that nobody knows who exactly is responsible for giving the galaxy its name, but there is plenty of evidence as to how the name evolved. What is known is that the term “Milky Way” has been used in Western Astronomy for at least...
The Ancient Romans called it‘via lactea’which quite literally meant a ‘milky way/road’. Also, the word ‘galaxy’ is derived from a Greek word for ‘milk’. Although there is not absolute proof as to why they named our galaxy as something related to milk, some researchers believe what...
You've probably seen illustrations of our home galaxy hanging on the walls in countless science classrooms. But we bet you didn't know that those posters are proportionately thicker than a key component of the galaxy itself. That's right. Like a fried egg, the Milky Way consists of a cent...
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, called Sag A*, is much less active than those at the center of other galaxies. A new study points to a simple answer: heat.Spotts, Peter N
Galileo turned the first telescope to the heavens in 1610 and, like earlier cartographers conceiving the layout of the Earth's surface, astronomers have continued to tweak and expand our understanding of the galaxy ever since. We don't simply reside in the Milky Way. Each of us is a part...
Finally, we have interactions. In this type of encounter, the galaxies exchange gas and dust, but don’t actually collide.Many astronomers believe that the trail of gas and dust that stretches from our Milky Way Galaxy to one nearby is the result of an interaction when the gravitational force...
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is shaped like a flat disk surrounding a central bulge. Whereas Population I stars are found mainly in the galactic disk, Population II stars mostly reside in the central bulge of the galaxy and in the halo surrounding this bulge.Population II stars date to the ...
“We can see that these stars wobble and move up and down at different speeds. When the dwarf galaxy Sagittarius passed the Milky Way, it created wave motions in our galaxy, a little bit like when a stone is dropped into a pond”, Paul McMillan, the astronomy researcher at Lund Observato...
They found that stars within the warped region of the galaxy orbit its center at a much slower speed than stars in other regions, suggesting an intergalactic collision. The Milky Way, our galactic home, is warped. Astronomers and physicists have been trying to understand why this weird wobble...