45. The Milky Way
The Milky Way Galaxy is our home galaxy, located near the centre of the local group. Estimates bring the size to about 100,000 light years across and 1000 light years thick. that is a long way to travel!
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy located near the centre of the local group, a large galaxy cluster out of the many others in the universe. The local group is just one of the groups inside the virgo supercluster. it consists of more than 30 other galaxy's (most bigger than the milky way). The local group is about 10 billion light years across! talk about big!
Like most galaxies, the milky way galaxy has a black hole in the middle of it. it is called Sagittarius A and it is a supermassive black hole. it is right in the centre of our galaxy, which is 25,640 light years away. so don't freak out that a black hole is going to swallow Earth.
It might seem crazy, but the milky way is almost as old as the universe itself! Scientists estimate that the universe was formed 13.7 billion years ago, while the milky way is 13.6 billion. Though, that was only the early stars. The disk and bulge only formed about 10-12 billion years ago.
Our galaxy is called the milky way because of a well known greek myth about the goddess Hera who spilled milk across the sky. But not everyone calls our galaxy the milky way. In china the call it the silver river and in southern Africa they call it the backbone of night.
The milky way was discovered by a very famous astronomer called Galileo Galilalei in the 1600's. if you have read my other blogs, you might have heard about him. Galileo Drew distinct stars when he found them looking though his telescope. This was one of a series of discoveries he later made note of in his published book Sidereus Nuncius
The milky way has four main spiral "arms" and a lot of little ones. Our solar system is in one of the four, called the Orion arm. The Milky Way consists of about 20 arms. the milky way has more than 100 billion stars!
I hope you enjoyed reading about our galaxy. to learn about more topics check out my other blogs and go to my youtube channel.
Until next time, Give Me Space!
Henry
Another very interesting blog. It is amazing to think that many of what we see as stars are in fact galaxies. I find it amazing that scientists have been able to work out the shape of the Milky Way and where we are in it.
Well done