Astronomy (THE MILKY WAY) What’s Inside?
Have you even heard of the Milky Way candy bar by the “Mars” company? Well let me tell you that it is a great candy bar. Jam-packed into this little candy bar, on the inside of a milk chocolate shell, is a creamy world. The Milky Way Galaxy that our planet is in today is similar to this. The Milky Way Galaxy is one of millions of galaxies in the solar system. Our galaxy, however, is the only one that we are aware of that has human life. This fact alone makes this galaxy the only one of great importance.
The Milky Way Galaxy is home to around 400 billion other stars, which include the most important one to us being the sun. The term Milky Way Galaxy comes from the Latin Via Lactea. The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to be around thirteen billion years old, and to our knowledge has around eight planets, one of which has just recently been classified as a non-planet. The Milky Way Galaxy is not only home to planets and stars, but it also has billions of particles and rocks that float at high rates of speed throughout the galaxy. This fact would be insignificant if it was not for the fact of one of these Texas or California size ice and rock balls could come crashing into what we call home.
The Milky Way Galaxy is incredibly vast, spanning an incredible 250-300 thousand light years. The Milky Way Galaxy is visible from earth as only a hazy band of white light, and is only seen at night. Now in the Milky Way Galaxy, you can see many of these stars and at certain times during the year, you can see some of the planets. Now the Milky Way is part of our solar system, and, as said above, made up of stars and other solar matter. The Milky Way Galaxy is unique in that it has what is called a Galactic Center. The Galactic disk, which bulges in the center of the Milky Way, has an estimated diameter of 70,000 to 100,000 light years. The Galactic Center harbors a compact object which is a possible supermassive black hole. The milky way galaxy is very fast moving at around 60 km per second. This is significant because another galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is moving at around 140 to 160 km per second. Many scientists believe that these two galaxies will collide in or around three to four billion years from now.
Some history of this beautiful galaxy is needed to help understand the greatness of its meaning. The Greek philosopher by the name of Democritus, who lived from 450–370 BC, was the first known person to suggest that the Milky Way might be made up of many distant stars. The actual facts and documentation came in 1610 when another philosopher by the name of Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the contents of the Milky Way and then discovered that it was composed of a huge number of faint stars.
As you can see from this post, there are many unique characteristics, which the Milky Way Galaxy has to offer us. As you go about your study of the Milky Way Galaxy, I hope that you take into consideration a few things. The first is that we are lucky that we are here, and not destroyed by all the crap that is floating around in the galaxy. It is also important to realize that knowing about your solar system is important, because one day we might have to do something about it.
Sources:
http://www.space.com/milkyway/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
http://seds.org/messier/more/mw.html
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