Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Related media on Commons. [edit on Wikidata] The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's function is to conduct research in astronomy and ...
To the Māori the Milky Way is the waka (canoe) of Tama-rereti. The front and back of the canoe are Orion and Scorpius, while the Southern Cross and the Pointers are the anchor and rope. According to legend, when Tama-rereti took his canoe out onto a lake, he found himself far from home as night was falling.
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.
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, composed of gas (mostly hydrogen), although in 2023 a ...
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 hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, [3][4][5] a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center ...
Visible at latitudes between + 20 ° and − 90 °. Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of May. Crux (/ krʌks /) 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 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 Near 3 kpc Arm (formerly also called Expanding 3 kpc Arm or simply 3 kpc Arm) was discovered in the 1950s by astronomer van Woerden and collaborators through 21-centimeter radio measurements of HI (atomic hydrogen). [1][2] It was found to be expanding away from the center of the Milky Way at more than 50 km/s. This spiral arm contains about ...