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The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
Sagittarius A*, abbreviated Sgr A* ( / ˈsædʒ ˈeɪ stɑːr / SADGE-AY-star [3] ), is the supermassive black hole [4] [5] [6] at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. Viewed from Earth, it is located near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, about 5.6° south of the ecliptic, [7] visually close to the Butterfly Cluster ...
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. [1] [2] Its central massive object is a supermassive black ...
The Magellanic Clouds ( Magellanic system [2] [3] or Nubeculae Magellani [4]) are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because both show signs of a bar structure, they are often reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (163,000 light-years), the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (c. 16 kiloparsecs (52,000 light-years) away) and the possible dwarf irregular galaxy called the Canis Major Overdensity.
Many star names are, in origin, descriptive of the part in the constellation they are found in; thus Phecda, a corruption of Arabic فخذ الدب ( fakhdh ad-dubb, 'thigh of the bear'). Only a handful of the brightest stars have individual proper names not depending on their asterism; so Sirius ('the scorcher'), Antares ('rival of Ares ', i.e ...
See also: Galaxy group, Galaxy cluster, List of galaxy groups and clusters The Laniakea Supercluster ( / ˌ l ɑː n i . ə ˈ k eɪ . ə / ; Hawaiian for "open skies" or "immense heaven") [2] or the Local Supercluster ( LSC or LS ) is the galaxy supercluster that is home to the Milky Way and approximately 100,000 other nearby galaxies.
Astronomers have used the Gaia space telescope to spy some of the first building blocks of the Milky Way galaxy: two ancient streams of stars named Shakti and Shiva that helped our home galaxy ...