Milky Way
Adjust your seat belts. You’re going to travel around the universe this time.
By looking at the topic, you know what I am going to share with you. As I’ve heard, most people prefer to see and investigate the universe including planets and stars from their childhood. Some of them dream to be scientists and to work in NASA due to their curiosity about the universe because of its interesting nature.
We live in one of the milky ways. A huge collection of over 200 billion stars, dust, and gas is simply defined as the Milky Way. It is the galaxy that includes the Solar System. When you hear the word galaxy, some may remember the galaxy we use in carnivals to enjoy. This galaxy is also like that from its appearance as well as from the way how it functions too. A Galaxy is a huge collection of stars clustered in the universe. Estimates say that the milky way is formed of approximately 100 billion galaxies and we don’t have numerical values even to count them all. The diameter of the stars in those galaxies is about 100,000 light-years. Did you know that the young stars burn hotter than the older ones? The biggest star, the sun, travels around the center of the milky way.
As per the identifications, galaxies are of several types. One of the brightest galaxies in the universe is spiral galaxies. Giant spin wheels come into mind when we study the appearance of these galaxies. Stars, gas, and dust are the ingredients that the arms of these spin wheels are made of. Our galaxy, the milky way also comes under this category. Mostly, 20% of the galaxies are spiral galaxies. These galaxies are one of the brightest.
The galaxies which don’t have any specific shape are irregular types. This category can be put into one of the smallest galaxies but 20% of the galaxies are irregular.
Eclipse-shaped galaxies are simply termed to be elliptical galaxies. These types of galaxies carry the older stars while the availability is stated as 60%. Elliptical ones are one of the largest and the most common ones in the universe. Since they carry older stars, they are not that much brighter galaxies than the others.
Where are the Earth residents in a milky way? Are we somewhere in this milky way? We’re located 26,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. We are at the inner edge of the Orion-Cygnus Arm which is combined by the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms, two primary spiral arms. How all the planets, stars, and sun are held? That’s amazing. Do you think how it happens ? Gravity is the reason for holding all these in places.
Even though our solar system contains only eight planets as scientists discovered, there may be over 100 billion planets in our milky way. These planets are named in exoplanets because they orbit other stars. Eight planets including our Earth orbit our star, the sun. Kepler-16b, CoRo T7 b, Kepler -11 system are some of such exoplanets. Kepler -186f is a planet that is estimated to have life on it like our Earth. There may be 40 billion planets that can support life as per the assumptions of some scientists. Some are 30 light years away from the sun. There are over 5,000 solar systems that have been discovered already.
The Milky Way is 13.6 billion years old. That is unbelievable. How long will it take to travel around our milky way? I mean once. It will take about 250 million years. What? Yes, that is something weird.
The closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy hurtles towards our milky way at 250,000 miles an hour. Every neighbor is like that. Always they have problematic issues with the closest one. Earth knows how to follow safeguard policies while few stars destroy due to this. The milky way is surrounded by most of the oldest stars in the universe. There exist dozens of satellite galaxies hanging around the milky way.
The Milky Way is a 365 days 24 hours working site. Fermi bubbles balloon, large bubbles with hot gas, and energetic bubbles are blown by the milky way at a two million miles an hour speed. Hydrogen gas clouds are also fast at a speed of 738,000 miles an hour from the galaxy.
When the small stars are not mature enough to trap light, they die and most black holes are formed through them. Sagittarius A is the black hole of our galaxy. They found over 100 billion black holes and they are 28,000 light-years away. Researchers estimate that there may be massive black holes in most of the larger galaxies.
On a clear night, if we observe the sky, the dusty ring of the milky way can be observed. But as far as the astronomers tried, they have failed to take pictures of the milky way. The pictures we see are imaginary pictures that have been drawn from the facts taken from astronomers’ words.
We talk and investigate about the milky way because of whom? Do you know the person who discovered it? Galileo Galilei is considered the one who discovered it first in 1610. But in some places, it is rejected. So, any exact person cannot be named to be the investigator.
The Milky way gives birth to more than seven stars in a year. But it swallows smaller galaxies too. Anyhow, that is the secret behind all the larger galaxies for being that much larger.
Every single star and every single planet you see are parts of the milky way. Can you imagine the time gap to the closest galaxy from ours? It’s two million light-years. Andromeda is the closest galaxy to our milky way. And another important fact that I want to share with you is the visibility of the milky way to United States people in a different way. Only one in three people who live in the USA can see the Milky Way band with their naked eyes. The reason is that they live too far from city lights because the city lights block the stars.
