Friday, October 2, 2009

Milky Way galaxy facts


Milky way is the name of galaxy in which our solar system is located.

Milky way is only one of the billions of other galaxies in the observable universe.

Milky way galaxy contains of more than 200 billions stars.

Diameter of our galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years.

The Milky Way galaxy looks the brightest when viewed in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius, towards the center of galaxy.

The largest neighboring galaxy to Milky Way is Andromeda galaxy.

The oldest star in Milky way galaxy is 13,2 billion years old, almost as old as the Universe itself.

One galactic year is time needed for solar system to complete one orbit around the galaxy, in our case we are talking about 225–250 million years.

Neighboring Andromeda Galaxy is approaching our galaxy at speed somewhere around 100 to 140 kilometers per second, which means that The Milky Way may collide with Andromeda galaxy in 3 to 4 billion years.

The Milky Way belongs to group of barred spiral galaxies, which means that it is a spiral galaxy with a bar-shaped structure that consists of billions of stars.

The Milky way galaxy is mostly composed of dark matter, which is basically a hypothetical matter that has its main characteristic in not being reactive towards electromagnetic force.

The newest studies have suggested that black holes exist in every galaxy, including ours.

If we imagine that you were able to hold the Milky Way galaxy in your hand, the nearest galaxy to you would be a walk of about 3 months away.

The Milky Way galaxy rotates clockwise.

Black holes are most likely to be located in the center of Milky Way galaxy.

5 comments:

Anonymous,  July 14, 2011 at 3:20 PM  

that is the best facts i have found about the solar system

Anonymous,  November 3, 2011 at 8:26 AM  

loved the facts and it helped me for my astronomy hunt test

Hannah,  March 6, 2012 at 6:34 AM  

This article was very helpful for my science project. I got an A on it and i love science so this really helped

Anonymous,  April 10, 2012 at 10:53 AM  

thanx for the awesome facts

Anonymous,  July 3, 2012 at 4:35 PM  

thanks this really hepled me with my report writing