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Although all the individual naked-eye stars in the entire sky are part of the Milky Way Galaxy, the term "Milky Way" is limited to this band of light. The light originates from the accumulation of unresolved stars and other material located in the direction of the galactic plane.
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.
Longitudinal lines of the galactic coordinate system. 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 Laniakea Supercluster (/ ˌ l ɑː n i. ə ˈ k eɪ. ə /; Hawaiian for "open skies" or "immense heaven") is the galaxy supercluster that is home to the Milky Way and approximately 100,000 other nearby galaxies.
Milky Way Galaxy: 30,000 pc 9.26×10 17: 17.97: Our home galaxy, composed of 200 billion to 400 billion stars and filled with the interstellar medium. Milky Way subgroup: 840,500 pc 2.59×10 19: 19.41: The Milky Way and those satellite dwarf galaxies gravitationally bound to it.
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.
Galactic Center. 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.
Astronomers have discovered stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are almost 13.6 billion years old. Over time, the universe and its contents have evolved. For example, the relative population of quasars and galaxies has changed and the universe has expanded.
2004 — The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager begins to map the distribution of distant clusters of galaxies. 2005 — Spitzer Space Telescope data confirm what had been considered likely since the early 1990s from radio telescope data, i.e., that the Milky Way Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy.
Data published in 2024 established that the galaxy contains the most distant, and therefore earliest, black hole known in the universe, estimated at around 1.6 million solar masses. The object's name is derived from its location in the GOODS-North field of galaxies and its high cosmological redshift number (GN + z11).
