The milky way galaxy nasa. The milky way is a large barred spiral galaxy. The milky way is itself on a collision course with our nearest neighbor the andromeda galaxy. Make the jump to light years as we cruise through the milky way galaxy. When you look up at stars in the night sky youre seeing other stars in the milky way.
Even though it is the same age as the milky way hubble observations reveal that the stars in andromedas halo are much younger than those in the milky way. When we talk about the enormity of the cosmos its easy to toss out big numbers but far more difficult to wrap our minds around just how large how far and how numerous celestial bodies really are. Our galaxy the milky way also has a supermassive black hole in the middle. Previously our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms.
Milky way galaxy not counting transient events such as gamma ray bursts the brightest object in the gamma ray sky is the plane of our milky way galaxy. If its really dark far away from lights from cities and houses you can even see the dusty bands of the milky way stretch across the sky. Well first off there isnt a way to simply count the number of stars in the milky way individually thats where the estimates come in. Researchers fine tune maps of our galaxys spiral arms using data from nasas wise mission.
It lies about 8 kpc from the center on what is known as the orion arm of the milky way. Using infrared images from nasas spitzer space telescope scientists have discovered that the milky ways elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. A galaxy is held together by gravity. The sun does not lie near the center of our galaxy.
Our sun a star and all the planets around it are part of a galaxy known as the milky way galaxya galaxy is a large group of stars gas and dust bound together by gravitythey come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The milky way galaxy. Researchers fine tune maps of our galaxys spiral arms using data from nasas wise mission. The milky way galaxy.
To make an estimate we have to calculate the mass of our galaxy and then the percentage of that mass that is made up of stars.