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A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, ... and that the resulting disk of stars could be seen as a band on the sky from a perspective inside it. ...
The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy. [1] [2] Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, [3] [4] [5] a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center.
The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally "milky", a reference to the Milky Way. Galaxies range in size from dwarfs with just a few billion (109) stars to giants with one hundred trillion (1014) stars, each orbiting its galaxy's center of mass.
The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It was originally named the Andromeda Nebula and is cataloged as Messier 31 , M31 , and NGC 224 . Andromeda has a D 25 isophotal diameter of about 46.56 kiloparsecs (152,000 light-years ) [ 8 ] and is approximately 765 kpc (2.5 million light-years ...
Artist's image of a firestorm of star birth deep inside the core of a young, growing elliptical galaxy NGC 4676 (Mice Galaxies) is an example of a present merger. The Antennae Galaxies are a pair of colliding galaxies – the bright, blue knots are young stars that have recently ignited as a result of the merger.
Figure 1.The observed structure of the Milky Way's spiral arms [1]. The Orion Arm, also known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm, is a minor spiral arm within the Milky Way Galaxy spanning 3,500 light-years (1,100 parsecs) in width and extending roughly 20,000 light-years (6,100 parsecs) in length. [2]
Disc galaxy – Type of galactic form; Spiral galaxy – Class of galaxy that has spiral structures extending from their cores. Galactic coordinate system – Celestial coordinate system in spherical coordinates, with the Sun as its center; Galactic halo – Spherical component of a galaxy which extends beyond the main, visible component