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The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a D 25 isophotal diameter estimated at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years), but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge).
The Milky Way is about 100 000 light-years across. 1.65 × 10 5 ly R136a1 , in the Large Magellanic Cloud , the most luminous star known at 8.7 million times the luminosity of the Sun, has an apparent magnitude 12.77, just brighter than 3C 273 .
In November 2010, it was announced that two large elliptical lobe structures of energetic plasma, termed bubbles, which emit gamma- and X-rays, were detected astride the Milky Way galaxy's core. Termed Fermi or eRosita bubbles, they extend up to about 25,000 light years above and below the Galactic Center.
The comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years), [12] about 2% larger. The radius of the observable universe is therefore estimated to be about 46.5 billion light-years.
The list aims to reflect current knowledge: not all galaxies within the 3.8 Mpc radius have been discovered. Nearby dwarf galaxies are still being discovered, and galaxies located behind the central plane of the Milky Way are extremely difficult to discern. It is possible for any galaxy to mask another located beyond it.
List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs. Animated 3D map of the nearest stars, centered on the Sun. A radar map of the distances ( ) and positions ( ) of all known stellar bodies or systems within 9 light years (ly) (for within 12 ly see this map ). Their distances are entered outward from the Sun (Sol) between concentric circles, each ...
data. Sagittarius A ( Sgr A) is a complex radio source at the center of the Milky Way, which contains a supermassive black hole. It is located between Scorpius and Sagittarius, and is hidden from view at optical wavelengths by large clouds of cosmic dust in the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
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.
NGC 4889 is probably the largest and the most massive galaxy out to the radius of 100 Mpc (326 million light years) of the Milky Way. The galaxy has an effective radius which extends at 2.9 arcminutes of the sky, translating to a diameter of 239,000 light years, about the size of the Andromeda Galaxy .
The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. [1] One galactic year is approximately 225 million Earth years. [2] The Solar System is traveling at an average speed of 230 km/s (828,000 km/h) or 143 mi/s (514,000 mph) within its trajectory ...