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The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
The Solar System is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing more than 100 billion stars. The Sun is part of one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur.
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. [1] [2] The word is derived from the Greek galaxias ( γαλαξίας ), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System.
Almost all planets detected so far are within the Milky Way. However, there is evidence that extragalactic planets, exoplanets located in other galaxies, may exist. The nearest exoplanets are located 4.2 light-years (1.3 parsecs) from Earth and orbit Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.
The Orion Arm, also known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm, is a minor spiral arm within the Milky Way Galaxy spanning 3,500 light-years (1,100 parsecs) in width and extending roughly 10,000 light-years (3,100 parsecs) in length. [2] This galactic structure encompasses the Solar System, including Earth.
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Galactic Center. 17 45 40.04, −29° 00′ 28.1″. The Galactic Center, as seen by one of the 2MASS infrared telescopes, is located in the bright upper left portion of the image. Marked location of the Galactic Center. The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy.
In astronomy, the Great Rift (sometimes called the Dark Rift or less commonly the Dark River) is a dark band caused by interstellar clouds of cosmic dust that significantly obscure the center and most radial sectors of the Milky Way galaxy from Earth's perspective.
To the Māori the Milky Way is the waka (canoe) of Tama-rereti. The front and back of the canoe are Orion and Scorpius, while the Southern Cross and the Pointers are the anchor and rope. According to legend, when Tama-rereti took his canoe out onto a lake, he found himself far from home as night was falling.
The Great Attractor is a region of gravitational attraction in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies that includes the Milky Way galaxy, as well as about 100,000 other galaxies.
Thick disk. The thick disk is one of the structural components of about 2/3 of all disk galaxies, including the Milky Way. It was discovered first in external edge-on galaxies. [1] Soon after, it was proposed as a distinct galactic structure in the Milky Way, different from the thin disk and the halo in the 1983 article by Gilmore & Reid. [2]