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- A Bubbly Origin for Stars around the Sun (youtube.com)
This video describes new research linking an interstellar void known as the Local Bubble to nearby star-forming regions. It begins by zooming into an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way to our own galactic neighborhood. Next, an animation beginning 14 million years ago steps through time to show how a series of supernovas created the Local Bubble. As the bubble expands, it sweeps up gas and dust that condense to form star clusters. The video then resets to 14 million years ago and steps forward again to show how the Sun’s path through the Milky Way galaxy brought it into the Local Bubble about 5 million years ago. Today, we’re coincidentally close to the middle of the bubble. Finally, the video pans around a 3D model of the Local Bubble and associated star-forming regions as they exist today. Video Credit: STScI
A busy patch of the Great Attractor (esahubble.org)- Although faint and small, the Milky Way passes through Norma.
Astronomers have mapped the cosmic watershed in which our Milky Way Galaxy is a droplet. The massive structure, which the research team dubs the Laniakea Supercluster, extends more than 500 million light-years and contains 100,000 large galaxies.
Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope- Astronomers Unveil Strong Magnetic Fields Spiraling at the Edge of Milky Way’s Central Black Hole (eventhorizontelescope.org)
A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Seen in polarized light for the first time, this new view of the monster lurking at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy has revealed a magnetic field structure strikingly similar to that of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This similarity also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*. The results were published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Norma Arm of the Milky Way passes through the constellation Norma, and it’s from the constellation that the arm’s name is derived.
- Galactic Center
- Milky Way (Wikipedia)
The Milky Way 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 term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxĂas kĂ˝klos), meaning “milky circle”. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.
- Sagittarius A
- The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which form part of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster.
- The Solar System is located at a radius of about 27,000 light-years (8.3 kpc) from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust.
- The Solar System is located within a structure called the Local Bubble, a low-density region of the galactic interstellar medium. Within this region is the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), an area of slightly higher hydrogen density.
The stars are words and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.
Jack Kerouc, Lonesome Traveler- The Sun moves around the Galactic Center of the Milky Way, at a distance of 26,660 light-years.
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?
Henry David Thoreau