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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.
Galactic Center. 17 45 40.04, −29° 00′ 28.1″. 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.
The Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. [7] At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (163,000 light-years ), [2] [8] [9] [10] 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 ...
The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way, where Earth is located. It has a total diameter of roughly 3 megaparsecs (10 million light-years; 9 × 10 19 kilometres ), [1] and a total mass of the order of 2 × 10 12 solar masses (4 × 10 42 kg). [2] It consists of two collections of galaxies in a "dumbbell" shape; the Milky ...
List of stellar streams. This is a list of stellar streams. A stellar stream is an association of stars orbiting a galaxy. It was once a globular cluster or dwarf galaxy that has now been torn apart and stretched out along its orbit by tidal forces. [1] An exception in the list about Milky Way streams given below is the Magellanic Stream ...
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to it, as part of the Milky Way subgroup, which is part of the local galaxy cluster, the Local Group.. There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years) of the Milky Way, but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some may themselves be in orbit of other satellite galaxies.
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 ...
Density wave theory or the Lin–Shu density wave theory is a theory proposed by C.C. Lin and Frank Shu in the mid-1960s to explain the spiral arm structure of spiral galaxies. [1] [2] The Lin–Shu theory introduces the idea of long-lived quasistatic spiral structure (QSSS hypothesis). [1] In this hypothesis, the spiral pattern rotates with a ...