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The Milky Way
A spiral galaxy containing 100 billion star
100,000 light years in diameter, it is one of the largest galaxies in our local group.
Two smaller galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud, orbit the Milky Way Galaxy.
Two smaller galaxies, the Sagittarius Dwarf and the Canis Major Dwarf, are colliding with the Milky Way Galaxy.
Mass of the Milky Way
From Newton’s version of Kepler’s third law the mass of the galaxy inside the sun’s orbit is 2 x 1041 kg which is about 100 billion times the mass of the sun.
The orbits of the Milky Way’s stars reveal that most of the galaxy’s mass consists of invisible dark matter in the halo.
Star-Gas-Star Cycle
Stars are born from the gravitational collapse of gas clumps in molecular clouds.
Supernova explosions of massive stars create hot bubbles in the interstellar medium that contain the heavier elements formed in the supernova explosion.
When this gas cools it forms molecular clouds which then form new stars.
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