Milky way Definition and 184 Threads

The GAIA telescope has been mapping stars in the Milky Way with unprecedented quality and quantities. It has been assembling the most detailed 3D map ever made of our Milky Way galaxy and has currently mapped over 1 billion stars. There are already hints that the Milky Way may be shaped...

I've been wondering how all the stars of the Milky Way orbit the center of the Milky Way almost like it orbits Sagittarius A*. It is possible that there is a common center of mass that happens to be in the center of the Milky Way that also happens to be in the center, ultimately giving it its...

In this paper https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160801210354.htm it states that the Milky Way has a huge void at its center, i can not think of any other galaxy that shows such a void, so is our Milky Way unique

A galaxy as massive as the Milky Way emits only 1% as much light. Link: Nature.

Which option is closest to scientists' current best estimate for the rate at which a supernova explosions occur somewhere in the milky way galaxy? a) once a day b) once a year c) once every hundred years d) once every thousand years From what I have found online, the current estimate is one...

I was reading the wikipedia entry for Dark matter halo here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter_halo And they have this graph for the Milky Way galaxy rotation curve: "Galaxy rotation curve for the Milky Way. Vertical axis is speed of rotation about the galactic center. Horizontal...

The Milky Way now has 49 known satellite galaxies, and the new one is the fourth largest. Link: New Scientist

I'm partial to Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth Series.One of the features of that series are extinct species who one ruled the galaxy. The first book in the series, The Tar-Aiym Krang, is about an artifact that is several million years old--and still functional. The End of the Matter is also...

I have been trying to calculate the distances to the spiral arms (neutral Hydrogen clouds) and our equation seems to work perfectly for longitudes 0<l<90 but doesn't seem to work for the outer galaxy (i.e. between 90<l<270) - we get distances but they're not correct. After reading a lot of...

Close look at the ATLASGAL image of the plane of the Milky Way, Video, available in ultra HD at, http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1606a/ Also, Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths (annotated). Up to 228MB in size, here...

Dear PF Forum, Lunar Satelite orbits the moon, The moon orbits the earth, The Earth orbits the sun, I know that some of you know about this picture You might want to tell me. "No Steven, the Sun also orbits the earth" But for all practical purpose, we'd say that the earth orbits the sun. So...

Signature of an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Central Molecular Zone of Our Galaxy - arXiv 1512.04661 (free reprint) Apparently there was another thread with a similar title ("Second black hole may lurk at Milky Way's heart") from June 2003, but it really had nothing to do with a second...

In 2008, astronomers discovered that a multi-million-solar-mass cloud named Smith's Cloud would hit the Milky Way's disk in about 27 million years. Now new Hubble observations have identified the mysterious cloud's likely origin. Link: New Scientist

I saw this news about galaxies twice the size of the milky way observed a relativity short time after the BB and wondered if this is still consistent with the BB theory or its timing? http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-monster-galaxies-scientists-perplexed-122353576.html I also wanted to ask if...

by Ken Croswell Call it the case of the purloined star cluster. Observations reveal that our galaxy stole a distant globular star cluster from one of its neighbours. Link: New Scientist

Let's say a spaceship from Earth (via a wormhole or something) suddenly found itself in a random place in the Milky Way galaxy. Assuming the crew possesses all of our current knowledge of the galaxy, and time was not a factor, would they be able to locate where our Sun is, and travel back to it?

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/tech/experience-the-milky-way-through-the-biggest-astronomical-image-ever-with-46-billion-pixels-1155060.html See the Milky Way in one massive 194GB image: http://astro.vm.rub.de/

Hi Everyone, first post here, another enthusiastic amateur I'm afraid so please excuse my general ignorance! I struck me the other day that it should be possible to find an arrangement of large galaxies that would allow light emitting from our galaxy to be bent back towards us. This would give...

finally got a chance to get out and try out my relatively new Samyang 14mm ultra wide angle lens this is using the Canon 5D Mk3, 3200 ISO, 14mm f/l, f2.8, 20 sec exp. The view is to the SW I traveled for about 40 minutes to get south of Sydney and away from the main city lights and their...

This paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.02832, The Age Distribution of Potential Intelligent Life in the Milky Way, estimates the age distribution of intelligent civilazations in the Milky Way. Unsurprisingly we rank somewhat below the advancement level of termites compared to your typical ET. It...

Is the presence of Dark Matter noted in Milky Way or somewhere around solar system??

Here's a few stacks of the milky way I took last week, using an 85mm lens and a static tripod- 3.2s exposures. Two from the region around Cygnus: And a panorama closer to the horizon (12 stacks): This is about 13k x 11k pixels. At 100% the nebulae are still clear: Unfortunately, I...

I used the ##v^2=MG/R## to calculate mass of milky way.Now ##v=225000## m/s G=6.7 10-11 and r is 16 kpc source (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Rotation_curve_%28Milky_Way%29.JPG) If I plut them I get ##50,625,000,000=v^2## and the other side G=6.6 10-11 and R =49.6 1019...

Just got back from vacation on the beach, there was one clear night which I used to do this (15mm lens): It's a composite (duh..) of long exposures for the trails (about 4 minutes each, ISO 800), with a burst of 13-second ISO 2000 images in the middle which are stacked. The humidity created...

I just read this article on phys.org, and am now looking for any further insight into this. The article claims that the milky way may have approximately 210 billion solar masses of matter within 60,000 ly of the galactic center. If this is true, wouldn't that make the milky way nearly twice the...

Homework Statement The Milky Way contains 100 billion stars. The present masses of stars in the Milky Way are distributed according to dN/dm ∝ m−2 , and that stars have masses between 0.1 M and 100 M M = Solar mass Determine the number of stars with masses greater than or equal to the Sun...

Homework Statement Interstellar medium is composed of atomic hydrogen at 100 K and number density 2E-7 m-3. Compute the average thermal energy density of the milky way disk. Then find the average magnetic energy density given the magnetic field strength of 3E-10 T. Homework Equations E=3/2 kT...

by Ken Croswell One of our galaxy’s arms may do a full 360, upping the chances that our galactic home is a rare cosmic beauty. Full story---including an excellent map of the Milky Way---at Scientific American.

Milky Way core drives wind at 2 million miles per hour -- ScienceDaily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150105182525.htmThe article graphic shows three distinct flows of material... One moving towards earth One moving away from earth And One with no net motion along the line of...

I have never seen a breakdown of the mass of the Milky Way, so I attempted to do it myself. My horrible estimates left me with 5x1040 mass of unknown origin, which is about 3% of the overall galaxy's mass. It appears the 3% could be explained if the estimates were a bit more accurate. I'm...

Alright, this has been egging me for awhile now, so here it goes. If light has a finite speed, and the rate of acceleration of the expansion of the universe has sped inflation up past this finite speed, is it possible that one of the young galactic cores we observed through the deep field image...

I am creating this wavelength chart (attached). I was told to use Compton's formula; I got this: (6.626068 × (10^(-34))) / (1.1542e+42 * 299 792 458) = 1.91493535 × 10-84 Apparently, it is substantially off scale. I was then told to try de Broglie wave. Wikipedia only shows relations...

THE CENTER of The Milky Way Galaxy! Supposedly, in the center of our galaxy (and in most galaxies, if I'm not mistaken) there is a super massive black hole. In my mind I've always had the picture of a galaxy where there is a bright light in the center and lots of starts orbiting it... so if...

This may be a stupid question, but it just popped up in my mind a few minutes ago. Considering we are able to "look back in time" so to speak, because light takes so long to get here, is it possible for us to look in the night sky and see light that came from the Milky Way? Considering the...

First of all, new to the forums, so HELLO! I am currently working on a project and cannot catch a break on what I need to be looking for. The project consists of calibrating antennas based on the radio noise from the Milky Way. We would like to point the antenna at the center of the milky way...

Does anyone happen to know the average density of dark matter per unit volume in the milky way? I've seen at least one formula, but I'm not sure I fully comprehend it. Here is the equation I found: ρ0 = 4.5 × 10−2(r0/kpc) − (2/3)2x10^30kg pc−3 The only part of this equation that I can't...

Are LMC, SMC approaching the Milky Way ?? Are the LMC & SMC approaching towards, or receding from, the MWG ? According to my calculations, using the data from here, and accounting for a ~220 km / sec velocity of the Sun, towards galactic longitude b=90 degrees, the LMC is moving nearly...

Spiral galaxies are among the most beautiful and familiar objects in the heavens, but a working explanation as to why galaxies evolve into spirals has eluded astronomers for decades. Now, two independent researchers have published a compelling solution to this eighty year old problem, which...

Could some of the cosmic background radiation be produced within the fabric of space itself? What if the big bang was not a one of event 15billion years ago but is happening right now today, now, all around us within the quantum world? If indeed the CBr was occurring within the fabric of...

How do you see the whole of milky way if we are in it?

Hello everyone this is my first time posting on this website. I wanted to know if our solar system takes a path through the milky way on a linear plane or if it garbages up and down on an unstable x and y path? Just so you all know I'm not an expert in theories or have any type of degree in...

Does this even make sense? Just how immense would that be?

Cosmic Cloud Poised to Birth Massive Star http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090609-aas-massive-star-precursor.html Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090609/sc_space/cosmiccloudpoisedtobirthmassivestar A sleeping giant http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8340 The...

I have seen several photos of the our milky way galaxy, other galaxies and some photos of even 100's of galaxies in the same picture. How do they do it? Usually if you see in the sky, all you see is the stars. (naked eyes) I believe to be able to see actual of our milky way galaxy we need to...

Is It Possible To View The Milky Way In The UK, during the UK summer time months, i have just moved here and i was wondering whether i can see the milky way on a clear summer night, the shot I am looking for is something like this...

I was just thinking about how this is done. I have looked online and I can't find a none mathematical explanation. If I am getting it right, we get the orbits by measuring the radial and tangential velocities of several stars relative to our sun. I thought the tangential velocity was...

I've wondered about this for a while: -the Milky Way which we are part of appears to be a white cloudish streak in the sky. I guess this is because the stars are so far away that it appears as a cloud of light? -But I would assume that all the stars in the Milky Way, our own galazy, must...

Does anyone know a good link to an animation or nice diagram showing how our solar system orbits the center of our milky way? I always imagined the milky way's plane, where most of the material is accumulated, as a record, granted, with a bigger bulge and 2/3 out from the center of that record...

Saw this on Yahoo! News; the title pretty much sums it up. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090105/ts_afp/usastronomy_090105234256 My question for the regular astro PFers: what would be the sun's revolution period around the galaxy based on this new information?

Traversing the milky way galaxy! when? Traversing our own galaxy is a lifelong quest for me and I am actually pondering it and long for it all the time, except when I am sleeping. Maybe it's just a fantasy, though I am not into science-fiction version of it, but many of us want to eventually...