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Map of stars cataloged by the Gaia release in 2021, displayed as density mesh in the diagram. The ESA spacecraft Gaia provides distance estimates by determining the parallax of a billion stars and is mapping the Milky Way with four planned releases of maps in 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2024.
The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy. [1] [2] Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses , which is called Sagittarius A* , [3] [4] [5] a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center.
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.
There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years) of the Milky Way, but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some may themselves be in orbit of other satellite galaxies.
A galactic quadrant, or quadrant of the Galaxy, is one of four circular sectors in the division of the Milky Way Galaxy. Numbered quadrants and sectors of constellations. Quadrants as starcharts, with most prominent stars marked.
The galactic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system in spherical coordinates, with the Sun as its center, the primary direction aligned with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the fundamental plane parallel to an approximation of the galactic plane but offset to its north.
It is roughly one-hundredth the mass of the Milky Way and is the fourth-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). The LMC is classified as a Magellanic spiral.
Milky Way with galactic plane, ecliptic and celestial equator. The galactic plane is the plane on which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy 's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles.
The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way. It contains the closest of celestial neighbours and among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud (which contains the Solar System ), the neighbouring G-Cloud , the Ursa Major moving group ( the closest stellar moving group ...
The Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a galactic collision predicted to occur in about 4.5 billion years between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group—the Milky Way (which contains the Solar System and Earth) and the Andromeda Galaxy.