Wintertime Street: Scandinavian peoples, including Swedes, have called the galaxy Winter Avenue (Vintergatan) given that the galaxy is most Plainly noticeable during the winter within the northern hemisphere, Specially at large latitudes in which the glow from the Sun late at night can obscure it during the summer.
依據希臘神話，銀河是赫拉在發現宙斯以欺騙的手法誘使他去餵食年幼的赫拉克勒斯因而濺灑在天空中的奶汁。另一種說法則是赫耳墨斯偷偷地將赫拉克勒斯帶去奧林匹斯山，趁著赫拉沉睡時偷吸她的奶汁，而有一些奶汁被射入天空，於是形成了銀河。
Involving stars lies the interstellar medium—a tenuous combination of gasoline and dust. Hydrogen, one of the most ample aspect, sorts substantial clouds that function stellar nurseries.
[127] A more recent 2018 paper afterwards considerably dominated out this speculation, and supported a conclusion that the Monoceros Ring, A13 and TriAnd Ring have been stellar overdensities somewhat kicked out from the main stellar disk, Using the velocity dispersion from the RR Lyrae stars discovered for being larger and in step with halo membership.[128]
This cosmic recycling is to blame for just about every atom in our bodies heavier than hydrogen. The iron with your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen you breathe—they have been all cast in stars that lived and died lengthy prior to the Sunshine was born. In a very actual perception, we are created from the galaxy by itself.
Stars while in the disk orbit around the galactic Centre, forming swirling streams that look to emanate like arms from the galactic bulge. Investigation in the mechanisms that generate the creation of spiral arms remains in its infancy, but the most recent research counsel that these arms sort and disperse in just comparatively short intervals of nearly one hundred million decades (out in the galaxy's thirteen billion several years of evolution).
A handful of choices include things like smaller sized black holes finding fairly huge as they consume up dust and gas in the natural environment nearby; alternatively, lesser black holes might merge jointly and build some thing far more monstrous.
Beyond the main spiral arms would be the Monoceros Ring (or Outer Ring), a hoop of fuel and stars torn from other galaxies billions of years ago. Nonetheless, various users of the scientific community a short while ago restated their placement affirming the Monoceros structure is practically nothing more than an above-density made by the flared and warped thick disk in the Milky Way.[229] The construction from the Milky Way's disk is warped along an "S" curve.[230]
The radius measurement is very unsure, as some of the material encompassing the Earth can be masquerading as being Portion of the Earth by itself.
The Milky Way is noticeable for a hazy band of white light-weight, some thirty° huge, arching during the night sky.[61] Although all the individual naked-eye stars in the complete sky are Section of the Milky Way Galaxy, the expression "Milky Way" is restricted to this band of sunshine.[62][63] The sunshine originates in the accumulation of unresolved stars and various content situated in the direction of your galactic aircraft. Brighter regions throughout the band look as gentle Visible patches generally known as star clouds.
Based on recent experiments, the Milky Way plus the Andromeda Galaxy lie มาวินเบท in what inside the galaxy coloration–magnitude diagram is referred to as the "green valley", a location populated by galaxies in changeover from the "blue cloud" (galaxies actively forming new stars) on the "pink sequence" (galaxies that lack star development). Star-development exercise in green valley galaxies is slowing since they operate out of star-forming gasoline within the interstellar medium.
A simulation printed in 2011 suggested which the Milky Way could possibly have obtained its spiral arm framework on account of recurring collisions with the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy.[226]
Telescopes enabled astronomers to differentiate The essential form and framework of several of the closest galaxies in advance of they understood they have been checking out galaxies.
The mass of your Milky Way, darkish issue integrated, equals one.five trillion solar masses, As outlined by current NASA estimates. The galaxy's seen make any difference is distributed involving its two hundred billion stars, their planets and the massive clouds of dust and gas that fill the interstellar Room.