Where is the Milky Way

Where is the Milky Way? If you think that the Milky Way is located at some distance from the Sun and the Earth, you are wrong. The sun and the Earth are part of the Milky Way! But the galactic center (the center of the galaxy) is located at a distance of about 25 thousand light-years from Earth. Recent measurements with a radio telescope have shown that the solar system takes about 226 million years to complete one revolution around the center of the Milky Way. A large discrepancy in numbers was eliminated using this information: until now scientists did not know the exact length of the galactic year; According to various estimates, it was 200 or 250 million years. And now, astronomers can correctly set the calendars. The outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy fans of science fiction called the galactic rim. The disk of the Milky Way – in many respects and have the "milk bar", which we see in the sky.

If you think that the Milky Way is located at some distance from the Sun and the Earth, you are wrong

In the vicinity of the sun are the two areas of the spiral sleeves, which are removed from us by about 3 thousand light-years. In constellations where these spiral sleeves are observed, they were given the name of the Sagittarius sleeve and the Perseus sleeve. The sun is almost in the middle between the two spiral sleeves. But relatively close to us (in galactic terms) in the constellation Orion, passes another, not very pronounced sleeve – sleeve Orion, which is considered an offshoot of one of the main spiral sleeves of the galaxy.

The name of the Milky Way is common in western culture, and is a carbon copy of the latin "via lacteal" – "milky road". According to Greek legend, Zeus decided to make his son Hercules, born of mortal woman, immortal. To do this, Hercules had to drink the divine milk. Hera woke up and saw that the feed is not her child, and pushed him away. The spray of milk of goddess turned into the Milky Way.

Let's look at "neighbors" Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is about 169 thousand light-years from the Large Magellanic Cloud, a 2 million light years from Andromeda and about 50 million light-years from the nearest large cluster of galaxies, the Virgo cluster. It is in the middle of a small cluster of galaxies – the Local Group.

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