10 Facts About the Milky Way
In between these superclusters are large stretches of open space where intrepid explorers or space probes would encounter very little in the way of galaxies or matter. For starters, the Milky Way is a disk about 120,000 light years across with a central bulge that has a diameter of 12,000 light years (see the Guide to Space article for more information)
How far is that? Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of kilometers (or miles) that light travels in one second, and there you have it: one light-year. Scaling the astronomical unit at one inch, here are distances to various stars, star clusters and galaxies: Alpha Centauri: 4 miles Sirius: 9 miles Vega: 25 miles Fomalhaut: 25 miles Arcturus: 37 miles Antares: 600 miles Pleiades open star cluster: 440 miles Hercules globular star cluster (M13): 24,000 miles Center of Milky Way galaxy: 27,000 miles Great Andromeda galaxy (M31): 2,300,000 miles Whirlpool galaxy (M51): 37,000,000 miles Sombrero galaxy (M104): 65,000,000 miles Astronomers measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using light-years
Milky Way Galaxy: Facts About Our Galactic Home
Although black holes cannot be directly viewed, scientists can see their gravitational effects as they change and distort the paths of the material around it, or as they fire off jets. Once thought unsuitable for potential life-bearing planets because such bodies would have to be too close to meet the criteria, red dwarfs are now considered potential suspects
Immense Halo Discovered Enveloping the Andromeda Galaxy --1,000 Times Greater Than Anticipated
The team also determined that it is enriched in elements much heavier than hydrogen and helium, and the only way to get these heavy elements is from exploding stars called supernovae. Many previous Hubble campaigns have used quasars to study gas much farther away than -- but in the general direction of -- Andromeda, so a treasure trove of data already existed
Hubble Finds Giant Halo Around the Andromeda Galaxy
.......they measured the mass alright, but you forgot to read their conclusion about the "mass" of the halo: "The gargantuan halo is estimated to contain half the mass of the stars in the Andromeda galaxy itself, in the form of a hot, diffuse gas." Dark matter really is not that weird of an idea. Could the Milky Way become a quasar? February 27, 2015 A quasar is what you get when a supermassive black hole is actively feeding on material at the core of a galaxy
How Many Stars in the Galaxy?
Ronald March 12, 2009 at 12:10 I think I understood that the number of stars in a galaxy is not primarily, or at least not only, determined by its mass, but by its total luminosity. One way I like to think about the number 1 billion is to think of one liter packed tightly with the finest flower grains that exist within a bag of fine grained flower such as Gold Medal Brand fine grained flower
The team also determined that it is enriched in elements much heavier than hydrogen and helium, and the only way to get these heavy elements is from exploding stars called supernovae. If the Milky Way does possess a similarly huge halo, the two galaxies' halos may be nearly touching already and quiescently merging long before the two massive galaxies collide
They are arranged in a nearly spherical halo around the Milky Way, with relatively few toward the galactic plane but a heavy concentration toward the centre. Most globular clusters are highly concentrated at their centres, having stellar distributions that resemble isothermal gas spheres with a cutoff that corresponds to the tidal effects of the Galaxy
NASA Discovers The Milky Way May Already Be Colliding With Another Galaxy
This July 2004 Hubble Space Telescope view supplied Thursday Nov.10, 2005 by NASA and the European Space Agency shows one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space, located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Over the last 1,500 years, nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in an ejection process known as a bipolar outflow
The Hubble Space Telescope's deep views of the universe show such encounters between galaxies were more common in the past when the universe was smaller. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way
Astrophysicists have concluded that, in order to sustain the nuclear reactions necessary to become a star, a gaseous body must have about 0.074-0.080 the mass of our sun. The sequence of the seven basic spectral types is denoted in capital letters, which have been translated visually by ChView into colors that exaggerate their actual tint, as derived from surface temperature, particularly at the extremes of the spectrum, in the bluish and reddish tints of the hottest and coolest stars, respectively
By the present decade, teams of astronomers were racing to build ever-more powerful computer simulations to model the origins of galaxies on every scale from cosmos to star clusters. In contrast to the lively spiral galaxies, which tend to be actively forming stars, the ellipticals are more like featureless blobs containing little gas and few new stars
Andromeda And The Milky Way Might Collide Sooner Than We Think
To find and study the halo, the team sought out quasars, distant star-like objects that radiate tremendous amounts of energy as matter funnels into the supermassive black holes in their cores. Extending for at least 2 million light years, if we could see in our night sky it would be 100 times the diameter of the Moon or 50 degrees across! Credit: NASA University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Nicholas Lehner led a team of scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope to identify an enormous halo of hot, ionized gas at least 2 million light years in diameter surrounding the galaxy
When will the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide - Business Insider
The picture below is what the sky would look like on Earth if it the planet were around to see the end of the galaxy war: ScienceTV on YouTubeThe solar system will not be entirely unaffected during this collision. "If two galaxies actually collide with each other, the stars basically pass right between each other, and the chance of two stars directly hitting each other is really, really small," Van der Marel said in the video
Even though our solar system is part of the Milky Way, the view looks distant because most of the light comes from the population of stars that are closer to the galactic center than our own Sun. Views of the Solar System Our Milkyway Galaxy This image of our galaxy, the Milky Way, was taken with NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer's (COBE) Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE)
For example, billions of small reflective bits of metal could be placed in an orbit between earth and sun, possibly at the L1 Lagrangian point (so they would stay in the same relative place from earth as we go around the sun). New data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope proves, NASA says, that in 4 billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide or pass each other by so closely that the gravitational force each exerts on the other will cause them to slow down to the point of merging
The "Great Attractor": What is the Milky Way Speeding Towards at 14 Million MPH?
So we travel one light year towards the great attractor every 3353 hours ( or 139.71 days ), and we must do this 250 million times, we do 2.61 light years every year, so we will get there rather quick, in 95,627,514.83 years. On the other hand, particle theory tells us that, at the microscopic level, even a perfect vacuum bubbles with quantum particles that are a natural source of dark energy
BBC Universe - The Andromeda galaxy is our galactic neighbour
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the galaxies; spread out across the void of space like spun sugar, but harbouring in their centres super-massive black holes. This clip looks at some of the American astronomer Edwin Hubble's most important contributions to astronomy and the equipment he used at the Mount Wilson Observatory
You see, Andromeda is the largest of all spirals in the night sky from our vantage point; regardless of what it was, it was reasonable to assume the reason it was so big is because it was closer to us than all the others. You have an apparently star-less extended nebula, that only resolves into an enormous number of stars when viewed with a huge telescope, and a star coincident in the sky with that object that is an enormous distance away
What is the Closest Galaxy to the Milky Way?
Astronomers also believe that the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is also in the process of being pulled apart by the gravitational field of the more massive Milky Way galaxy. It was in the course of investigating this ring of stars, and a closely spaced group of globular clusters similar to those associated with the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, that the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy was discovered
We also know of an irregular supercluster of galaxies, which contains the Virgo Cluster, which in turn contains our Local Group, which in turn contains our Milky Way galaxy and the nearby and Andromeda galaxy. When to look for the Andromeda Galaxy Find the Andromeda galaxy using the Great Square of Pegasus Find the Andromeda galaxy using the constellation Cassiopeia History of our knowledge of the Andromeda galaxy Andromeda and Milky Way in context EarthSky Facebook friend Josh Blash captured this image of the Andromeda galaxy in July, 2014
You can see the Milky Way Galaxy from Earth with the naked eye - Milky Way Galaxy facts
How to see the Milky Way back Can you see the Milky Way Galaxy from Earth at night with the naked eye? Yes, in fact, the Milky Way Galaxy is one of the most interesting naked eye sights in the night sky. At longer wavelengths in the infrared, light passes through these clouds more easily and we get a better view of the overall shape of our Galaxy, but there are still enough clouds created a dark reddened lane through the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy
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