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The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7][8][9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
Satellite galaxies that orbit from 1,000 ly (310 pc) of the edge of the disc of the Milky Way Galaxy to the edge of the dark matter halo of the Milky Way at 980,000 ly (300 kpc) from the center of the galaxy, [ a ] are generally depleted in hydrogen gas compared to those that orbit more distantly. This is because of their interactions with the ...
These diagrams enable the assessment of nucleosynthesis channels and galactic evolution in samples of stars as a first-order approximation. They are among the most commonly used tools for Galactic population analysis of the Milky Way. The diagrams use abundance ratios normalised to the Sun, (placing the Sun at (0,0) in the diagram).
Diagram of the Milky Way, with galactic features and the relative position of the Solar System labeled. 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. [270]
Orion Arm. 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 20,000 light-years (6,100 parsecs) in length. [2] This galactic structure encompasses the Solar System, including Earth.
The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way, where Earth is located. It has a total diameter of roughly 3 megaparsecs (10 million light-years; 9 × 10 19 kilometres), [1] and a total mass of the order of 2 × 10 12 solar masses (4 × 10 42 kg). [2] It consists of two collections of galaxies in a "dumbbell" shape; the Milky ...
Hubble sequence. The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies published by Edwin Hubble in 1926. [1][2][3][4] It is often colloquially known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because the shape in which it is traditionally represented resembles a tuning fork. It was invented by John Henry Reynolds and Sir James Jeans.
The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy's centre. It is typically rendered graphically as a plot, and the data observed from each side of a spiral galaxy are generally asymmetric, so that data from each ...