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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.
Location of the Solar System within the Milky Way. The Solar System travels alone through the Milky Way in a circular orbit approximately 30,000 light years from the Galactic Center. Its speed is about 220 km/s. The period required for the Solar System to complete one revolution around the Galactic Center, the galactic year, is in the range of ...
1995 — First detection of small-scale structure in the cosmic microwave background. 1995 — Hubble Deep Field survey of galaxies in field 144 arc seconds across. 1998 — The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey maps the large-scale structure in a section of the Universe close to the Milky Way. 1998 — The Hubble Deep Field South is compiled.
The timeline of the early universe outlines the formation and subsequent evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang (13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago) [1] to the present day. An epoch is a moment in time from which nature or situations change to such a degree that it marks the beginning of a new era or age. Times on this list are measured ...
1920 – In the Great Debate between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, galaxies are finally recognized as objects beyond the Milky Way, and the Milky Way as a galaxy proper. [166] Within it lies the Solar System. 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto. [167] It was regarded for decades as the ninth planet of the Solar System.
The universe has appeared much the same as it does now, for many billions of years. It will continue to look similar for many more billions of years into the future. The Galactic disk of the Milky Way is estimated to have been formed 8.8 ± 1.7 billion years ago but only the age of the Sun, 4.567 billion years, is known precisely. [82]
The first recorded use of the term "Solar System" dates from 1704. [1][2] Since the seventeenth century, philosophers and scientists have been forming hypotheses concerning the origins of the Solar System and the Moon and attempting to predict how the Solar System would change in the future. René Descartes was the first to hypothesize on the ...
William Herschel's model of the Milky Way, 1785. 1781 – Charles Messier and his assistant Pierre Méchain publish the first catalogue of 110 nebulae and star clusters, the most prominent deep-sky objects that can easily be observed from Earth's Northern Hemisphere, in order not to be confused with ordinary Solar System's comets. [73]