Mr. Cummins
Science
07 March 2017
The Milky Way
The galaxy is made of many diverse stars. From Protostars to Supergiant stars, it is also very unique. It consists of the only known planet that can sustain life (Earth ). As we know, the galaxy is full of stars. But did you know it is almost as old as the universe, or it was made of several galaxies that collided to create our galaxy? Here are some basic facts to improve your foundation of your understanding of our galaxy, the Milky Way. ( Below here is an image of the Milky Way).
This image (1) shows an embellished picture of the Milky Way. Who Discovered The Milky Way?
First studied by the ancient Greeks, they theorized the galaxy as a large group of stars that will dim out eventually. …show more content…
However, he never realized the large fragments of gas and dust masked within the Milky Way to show its true shape. In the 1920s, another famous astronomer and a telescope named in honor of him, Edwin Powell Hubble provided irrevocable data about our galaxy. He concluded that the circling nebulae were indeed whole other galaxies. This helps modern day astronomers perceive the genuine essence and configuration of the Milky Way, and also the accurate volume and extent of the universe everywhere. Therefore, the discoverer of the Milky Way, is otherwise known as one of the most influential astronomers and physicist during the Renaissance, Galileo …show more content…
The Milky Way is extremely large in size. When measured it is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers (100,000 light years). The Milky Way has a mass of about 100 billion solar masses, we can now say that it has about 100 billion stars.The sun is part of our solar system, which is a yellow dwarf star is said to collapse to a white dwarf in 7 billion years, according to scientists. The sun is also a main sequence star, also the nearest stars to us, he stars are Sirius and Alpha Centauri A. Although they vary in brightness and sizes, they all share one prevalent thing; they all modify hydrogen into helium in their crux. This releases large portions of energy.
Any stars in the main sequence are in the element hydrostatic equilibrium, gravity pulling them inwards, and all the light pressure pushing the star outwards. Just like any star in the universe, there are different stars near the heart of the Milky Way. However, the sun lays no where near the heart of the Milky Way, it lies within the of Orion Arm. It is nested between the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms in the Milky Way. How was the Milky Way