The Milky Way Galaxy

1798 Words4 Pages

Many people who live on Earth are close minded to what is really out there in the universe. They cannot even begin to fathom the vastness of it and how Earth is just a tiny little speck compared to everything else out there. From the planets to the stars and out towards the edge of the unknown, we can only see what science provides us with. From this, we know that we are nothing but a tiny planet located in a solar system of millions in a galaxy of many more in the universe.

A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.

The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...

... middle of paper ...

...nucleus; this type of AGN was discovered byHeckman (1980) is called Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Region (LINER); examples include the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) andM65.

Works Cited

"All About Galaxies." Space.com. TechMediaNetwork, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

.

"All About the Milky Way." Space.com. TechMediaNetwork, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

.

Frommert, Hartmut, and Christine Kronberg. "Galaxies." Seds.org. N.p., 13 May

2009. Web. 6 Jan. 2011. .

"Galaxies." Universe Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. "Galaxy." Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia .

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

.

Open Document