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The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7][8][9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [2] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016, [3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee ...
Cygnus (constellation) Visible at latitudes between + 90 ° and − 40 °. Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of September. Cygnus is a northern constellation on the plane of the Milky Way, deriving its name from the Latinized Greek word for swan. [1] Cygnus is one of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and ...
Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of May. Crux (/ krĘŚks /) is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross -shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way 's visible band. The name Crux is Latin for cross.
Astronomers using the Gaia space telescope have located two ancient streams of stars that helped the Milky Way galaxy grow and evolve more than 12 billion years ago.
Below are lists of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius and separated into categories by galaxy. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 695,700 km; 432,300 mi). [ 1 ] The Sun, the orbit of Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune, compared to four stars.
5th century BC — Democritus proposes that the bright band in the night sky known as the Milky Way might consist of stars. 4th century BC — Aristotle believes the Milky Way to be caused by "the ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together" and that the "ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the region of the world which ...
Astronomical naming conventions. In ancient times, only the Sun and Moon, a few stars, and the most easily visible planets had names. Over the last few hundred years, the number of identified astronomical objects has risen from hundreds to over a billion, and more are discovered every year. Astronomers need to be able to assign systematic ...