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8 Interesting facts about the Milky Way
1. “Milky Way”, our home galaxy
The Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy in which our solar system resides. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, it consists of more than 200 billion stars with a diameter of about 100,000 light years. Most of the stars and objects are distributed along the galactic plane. It has an average thickness of about 2,000 light years.
2. The Sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way at 282,000 kilometers per hour!
Our solar system with the sun at the center The planets and other small objects are moving around the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 282,000 kilometers per hour. And it takes about 230 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way.
3. We are in the Milky Way. So how do we see the Milky Way?
That’s because Our solar system lies within the Milky Way’s arm. It’s about 25,800 light-years from the galactic center, so we can look out into different parts of our galaxy. And it’s a view from the side of the Milky Way. Appeared in a long line across the sky from north to south. The region with the highest density of stars is near the center of the Milky Way.
4. Every star seen in the sky All in the Milky Way
That night sky In addition to being full of stars arranged in various constellations, there are objects in deep space that can be seen with the naked eye, such as the Andromeda Galaxy, a large galaxy nearby. we most We can see this galaxy with the naked eye if the sky is dark enough. but will only be seen as a faint fog in the sky We cannot see individual stars within the Andromeda Galaxy, so it is impossible for us to see any other stars outside the Milky Way. Every star we can see in the night sky It is therefore all stars within our Milky Way Galaxy.
Andromeda Galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away from Earth, is the farthest object that humans can see with the naked eye.
5. “In the center of the Milky Way”, the location where the sky is most magnificent
The Milky Way we see in the sky It looks like a long line that runs from north to south. Each location has unequal density of stars. The center of the Milky Way is the densest concentration of stars and celestial objects. Between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius. It can be seen with the naked eye as bright clouds interspersed with opaque clouds of dense dust in the Milky Way. If using binoculars to scan this area will see the stars glitter like grains of sand Deep space objects are also densely populated, such as nebulae and star clusters.
6. Beneath its splendor lies a hidden “giant black hole” at the center of the Milky Way.
In the center of the Milky Way There is a star in motion orbiting something that cannot be seen in visible wavelengths. Astronomers collected these stars for more than 10 years and found that the object around which the star is orbiting has a mass equal to 4 million times the mass of the sun! but only as small as our solar system! This is an important piece of evidence indicating that There are supermassive black holes. The supermassive black hole lies at the very center of the Milky Way, which astronomers named Sagittarius A* (Sagittarius A star).
7. WiFi that we use today Started by searching for black holes in the Milky Way.
Back in the 1970s, Australian engineer John O’Sullivan Work with astronomers to find the microscopic black holes predicted by the famous British physicist Stephen Hawking. John O’Sullivan needed to develop a new data processing technique to extract the black hole’s radio information. Exit unwanted background radio waves.
In the end, although he and his team did not discover the small black hole as expected, But this newly invented way of processing information It became an important tool that John O’Sullivan used to solve problems connecting wireless computers. This is the heart and starting point of the WiFi technology that we use today. And this technology has generated millions of dollars in revenue for Australia.
8. Is there anything bigger than the Milky Way?
The Milky Way Galaxy is a member of a group of galaxies called the Local Group of galaxies or “Local Group” spanning over 10 million light years, consisting of more than 80 member galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy), the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy respectively, and there is also a larger system than the Local Group, the Virgo Supercluster.
