Our Galaxy the Milky Way
Category : Milky Way Tags : galaxy historyThe Milky Way structure.
The Milky Way is formed in a Barred Spiral Galaxy which somehow looks like a whirlpool with four major spiral arms. The diameter of the galaxy is 100,000 light years while its thickness is approximately 1,000 light years.
Though it is difficult to tell how old exactly is our Milky Way, the oldest known star which astronomer observed is as old as 13.2 billion years old, just slightly younger that the age of the universe (13.7) itself.
The mass of the entire Milky Way is estimated to be 580 billion times of the mass of our Solar System.
The center of the Milky Way consist of a super massive black hole which has very high density creating enough gravitational force to hold the entire galaxy together, just like how the Sun in our Solar System pull all the nine planets into its orbit.
Our Solar System located in a distance of about 26,000 +/-1,400 light years from the center of the Milky Way. As planet Earth orbiting the Sun, our Sun are constantly orbiting around the center of the Milky Way. It takes about 220 million years for the Sun to complete one rotation around the center of the Milky Way.
Galaxy within the Milky Way
The Milky Way is a very huge galaxy of about 100,000 light years in diameter. Within, it also has numerous smaller galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. The largest of these orbiting galaxies is the Large Magellanic Cloud with a diameter of 20,000 light years. Many others dwarf galaxies with size between few hundred to a few thousand light years in diameter also orbiting the Milky Way.
These resident galaxies may have formed from a massive black hole within the Milky Way and pulled the nearby stars and astronomical structures into its gravitational force creating its own galaxy. There are vast amount of black hole throughout the galaxy.
Nearby Galaxy to the Milky Way
The closest galaxy from our Milky Way is the Andromeda Galaxy.
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