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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 ...
The Galactic Center, as seen by one of the 2MASS infrared telescopes, is located in the bright upper left portion of the image. Marked location of the Galactic Center A starchart of the night sky towards the Galactic Center. The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy.
According to recent studies, the Milky Way as well as the Andromeda Galaxy lie in what in the galaxy color–magnitude diagram is known as the "green valley", a region populated by galaxies in transition from the "blue cloud" (galaxies actively forming new stars) to the "red sequence" (galaxies that lack star formation). Star-formation activity ...
For a spiral galaxy, this can be obtained from the inclination of the galactic plane to the plane of the sky, and the position angle of the major axis as viewed from Earth. The result yields a direction perpendicular to the galactic plane. [1] In the case of the Milky Way, this is given by the coordinates of the galactic pole.
The spiral galaxy NGC 4622 lies approximately 111 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. NGC 4622 is an example of a galaxy with leading spiral arms. [2] Each spiral arm winds away from the center of the galaxy and ends at an outermost tip that "points" in a certain direction (away from the arm).
The galactic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system in spherical coordinates, with the Sun as its center, the primary direction aligned with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the fundamental plane parallel to an approximation of the galactic plane but offset to its north.
The most famous deep-sky object in Andromeda is the spiral galaxy cataloged as Messier 31 (M31) or NGC 224 but known colloquially as the Andromeda Galaxy for the constellation. [53] M31 is one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye, 2.2 million light-years from Earth (estimates range up to 2.5 million light-years). [54]
Quadrants are described using ordinals—for example, "1st galactic quadrant", [1] "second galactic quadrant", [2] or "third quadrant of the Galaxy". [3] Viewing from the north galactic pole with 0 degrees (°) as the ray that runs starting from the Sun and through the galactic center, the quadrants are as follows (where l is galactic longitude):