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Measurements with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006 suggest the Magellanic Clouds may be moving too fast to be orbiting the Milky Way. [3] Of the galaxies confirmed to be in orbit, the largest is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, which has a diameter of 2.6 kiloparsecs (8,500 ly) [4] or roughly a twentieth that of the Milky Way.
The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. [1] One galactic year is approximately 225 million Earth years . [ 2 ]
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 in other arms of the galaxy, which are so far away that they cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
Three of the closest dwarf irregular satellites of the Milky Way include the Small Magellanic Cloud, Canis Major Dwarf, and the newly discovered Antlia 2. The Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way's largest satellite galaxy, and fourth largest in the Local Group. This satellite is also classified as a transition type between a dwarf spiral and ...
The nature of the Milky Way's bar, which extends across the Galactic Center, is also actively debated, with estimates for its half-length and orientation spanning between 1–5 kpc (short or a long bar) and 10–50°. [23] [25] [27] Certain authors advocate that the Milky Way features two distinct bars, one nestled within the other. [28]
Milky Way Galaxy: 30,000 pc 9.26×10 17: Our home galaxy, composed of 200 billion to 400 billion stars and filled with the interstellar medium. [36] [37] Milky Way subgroup: 840,500 pc 2.59×10 19: The Milky Way and those satellite dwarf galaxies gravitationally bound to it. Examples include the Sagittarius Dwarf, the Ursa Minor Dwarf and the ...
Picture Galaxy Type Distance from Earth Magnitude Group Membership Notes Diameter (ly) Millions of light-years Mpc M m - Milky Way: SBbc 0.0265 (to the galactic center) [2] 0.008 [2] ...
The comoving distance from Earth to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40 × 10 26 m) in any direction. The observable universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28.5 gigaparsecs [27] (93 billion light-years or 8.8 × 10 26 m). [28]