I know our Solar System is on the extreme edge of one arm of many arms of the milky Way Galaxy. There is a great white blob in the centre. What is in there?
2006-10-17 21:41:40 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy of the Local Group. Although the Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the universe, the Galaxy has special significance to humanity as it is the home of the Solar System. Democritus (450 BC–370 BC) was the first known person to claim that the Milky Way consists of distant stars.
The term "milky" originates from the hazy band of white light appearing across the celestial sphere visible from Earth, which is comprised of stars and other material lying within the galactic plane. The galaxy appears brightest in the direction of Sagittarius, towards the galactic center. Relative to the celestial equator, the Milky Way passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux, indicating the high inclination of Earth's equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic relative to the galactic plane. The fact that the Milky Way divides the night sky into two roughly equal hemispheres indicates that the solar system lies close to the galactic plane.
The main disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is about 80,000 to 100,000 light years in diameter, about 250-300 thousand light years in circumference, and outside the Galactic core, about 1,000 light years in thickness. It is composed of 200 to 400 billion stars [1]. As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the galaxy were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the solar system would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 in) in width. The Galactic Halo extends out to 250,000 to 400,000 light years in diameter. As detailed in the Structure section below, new discoveries indicate that the disk extends much farther than previously thought.
The Milky Way's absolute magnitude, which cannot be measured directly, is assumed by astronomical convention to be −20.5, although other authors give an absolute magnitude of -21.3.
2006-10-18 01:23:13 · answer #1 · answered by Miss LaStrange 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
At the very center is a Black Hole with about 3 million solar masses. Around this, the density of stars is very high---about ten million per cubic parsec, or about a hundred million times more dense than near the Sun. The center has relatively little gas (or the Black Hole would be more active) compared to the amount of stars, but there is a disk of dense gas and dust a few hundred lightyears from the center. There is a complicated magnetic field that is about a thousand times weaker than the magnetic field of the Earth.
2006-10-18 11:02:50 · answer #2 · answered by cosmo 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Chewy Nougat
2006-10-18 04:43:25 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
A trillion Earths crammed smaller than a point.
And our galaxy has a small one..
2006-10-18 07:05:05 · answer #4 · answered by anonymous 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The center is called the Galactic Center which consist of many things. This is a good website to refer to.
http://cassfos02.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/MW.html
2006-10-18 04:52:30 · answer #5 · answered by darkenbinary 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
no specific significance , it is just a point or the nebulae in the saggitarius constellation aroun which the galaxy spins
2006-10-18 07:33:16 · answer #6 · answered by Chaitanya P 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Socks that get lost in the laundry?
2006-10-18 04:50:04 · answer #7 · answered by ladybug_jane22 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
a white hole
perhaps?
2006-10-18 04:45:10 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
a blackish white hole
2006-10-18 05:53:25 · answer #9 · answered by shelly 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A BLACKHOLE
2006-10-18 04:45:34 · answer #10 · answered by kYLE 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋