The Milky Way Galaxy essays

The Milky Way Galaxy essays One of the most intriguing parts of the universe is our knowledge of the Milky Way. The hazy band of white light that one can often see in the night sky has been proven to be the home of our Solar System. There are so many different aspects that make the Milky Way so incredible, and it is important to become knowledgeable about these different aspects. Its structure, its age, its surrounding galaxies and clusters, its mythology, the existence of life throughout it, and even its future are all important components of what makes the Milky Way so inconceivable. Focusing on its structure, the Milky Way is the immense, spiral galaxy which is the home of our Solar System with around 400 billion other stars and their planets, and thousands of nebulae and clusters. It is a giant, as its mass is probably between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses, and its diameter is about 100,000 light years. It is arranged into three main components as shown in the diagram at the end of the paper. The first component is the disk, where our solar system resides. The disk of the Milky Way has four spiral arms and is made up primarily of Population I stars which tend to be blue and are reasonably young. They span an age range between a million and ten billion years. The second component is the bulge, which is at the center of the galaxy. This is a high-density region where Population II stars dominate the region. These are stars which tend to be very old, at around 10 billion years old, with a reddish color. It is said that there is a gigantic b lack hole at its center, which is "an invisible object whose gravitational pull is so great that not even light can escape from it" (Nat. Geographic 551). Our sun is over 27,000 light years from the center of the galactic galaxy. "All stars and star clusters in the Milky Way orbit the center of the Galaxy, much as the planets in our solar system orbit the sun" (551). The third component is known...