Where Are The Nearest Islands Of Stars (original) (raw)

| | | Astronomy Question Of The Week: Where Are The Nearest Islands Of Stars by Staff Writers Bonn, Germany (SPX) Dec 15, 2009 The images show Earth's position within the local supercluster, from top left to bottom right (left to right in the high-resolution image), five zoom levels / five star maps: 1 - the Solar System. 2 - the Sun's neighbouring stars. 3 - the immediate vicinity of the Milky Way. 4 - the Local Group. 5 - the Virgo Supercluster. Credit: Azcolvin (CC-BY-SA 3.0). For a larger version of this image please go here. Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, consists of more than 100 billion stars and its spiral arms extend across 100,000 light-years. As if these were not already virtually inconceivable numbers for humans, the Milky Way is only one galaxy among probably billions of galaxies of various sizes and shapes that can be seen in the visible Universe using modern telescopes.Galaxies are not distributed evenly throughout space. They appear in groups, galaxy clusters and superclusters. The Milky Way system is surrounded by several dwarf galaxies, of which the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds are the most well known. Both are visible in the southern sky with the naked eye.The Andromeda Nebula, despite being around 2.5 million light-years away, is visible to the naked eye as a weak nebula in the constellation Andromeda.With a diameter of around 150,000 light-years, the Andromeda Galaxy is a little larger than the Milky Way and is similarly surrounded by smaller satellite galaxies.The Andromeda Galaxy is one of the few galaxies that is moving towards us and will probably collide with the Milky Way in several billion years (see the astronomy question from week 30: Whither goest thou, Milky Way?). Star cluster - galaxy - galaxy group/galaxy cluster - superclusterOur Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are the most massive members of what is known as the Local Group, which also contains around 40 dwarf galaxies.On greater length scales, the Local Group is assigned to the Virgo Supercluster. In the centre of the Virgo Supercluster there is the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, which is named after the constellation Virgo. The Local Group is attracted by the large mass of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster and is moving towards it. Related Links German Aerospace Center (DLR) Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It | | First Known Binary Star Is Discovered To Be A Sextuplet System Rochester NY (SPX) Dec 14, 2009 In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them. The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars-a pair of stars that orbit each other-ever known. Modern telescopes have since found that Mizar is itself a pair of binaries, revealing ... read more | | --------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |