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The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: ...
These diagrams enable the assessment of nucleosynthesis channels and galactic evolution in samples of stars as a first-order approximation. They are among the most commonly used tools for Galactic population analysis of the Milky Way. The diagrams use abundance ratios normalised to the Sun, (placing the Sun at (0,0) in the diagram).
The Solar System travels alone through the Milky Way in a circular orbit approximately 30,000 light years from the Galactic Center. Its speed is about 220 km/s. Its speed is about 220 km/s. The period required for the Solar System to complete one revolution around the Galactic Center, the galactic year , is in the range of 220–250 million years.
The diagram also shows considerable evolution through time. The red sequence earlier in the evolution of the universe was more constant in color across magnitudes and the blue cloud was not as uniformly distributed but showed sequence progression. One of five patches of sky covered by the COMBO-17 survey. [4]
A simple chart for classifying the main star types using Harvard classification In astronomy , stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the rainbow of colors ...
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to it, as part of the Milky Way subgroup, which is part of the local galaxy cluster, the Local Group. [ 1 ] There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years ) of the Milky Way, [ 2 ] but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some ...
The Milky Way was once considered an ordinary spiral galaxy. Astronomers first began to suspect that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy in the 1960s. [38] [39] Their suspicions were confirmed by Spitzer Space Telescope observations in 2005, [40] which showed that the Milky Way's central bar is larger than what was previously suspected.
The Gould Belt is a local ring of stars in the Milky Way, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees, first reported by John Herschel and Benjamin Gould in the 19th century. [1] It contains many O- and B-type stars , and many of the nearest star-forming regions of the local Orion Arm , to which the Sun belongs.