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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.
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated 10 24 stars – more stars (and, potentially, Earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth.
Size (left) and distance (right) of a few well-known galaxies put to scale. The following is a list of notable galaxies.. There are about 51 galaxies in the Local Group (see list of nearest galaxies for a complete list), on the order of 100,000 in the Local Supercluster, and an estimated 100 billion in all of the observable universe.
The stars with the most confirmed planets are the Sun (the Solar System's star) and Kepler-90, with 8 confirmed planets each, followed by TRAPPIST-1 with 7 planets. The 995 multiplanetary systems are listed below according to the star's distance from Earth. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System, has three planets ( b, c and d ).
Lists of astronomical objects. Selection of astronomical bodies and objects: Moon Mimas and Ida, an asteroid with its own moon, Dactyl. Comet Lovejoy and Jupiter, a giant gas planet. The Sun; Sirius A with Sirius B, a white dwarf; the Crab Nebula, a remnant supernova.
Three of the four inner planets (Venus, Earth, and Mars) have atmospheres substantial enough to generate weather; all have impact craters and tectonic surface features, such as rift valleys and volcanoes. Mercury (0.31–0.59 AU from the Sun) is the smallest planet in the Solar System.
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 ...
Galaxy. NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 55,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light-years from Earth. A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. [1] [2] The word is derived from the Greek galaxias ...