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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: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
By comparison, the Earth's magnetic field has an average strength of about 0.3 G (Gauss) or 30 μT . Radio-faint galaxies like M 31 and M33, the Milky Way's neighbors, have weaker fields (about 5 μG), while gas-rich galaxies with high star-formation rates, like M 51, M 83 and NGC 6946, have 15 μG on average. In prominent spiral arms, the ...
The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [ h ] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's ...
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 plane is the plane on which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles. In actual usage, the terms galactic plane and galactic poles usually refer specifically to the plane and poles of the Milky Way, in which Planet Earth is located.
The internal structure of the inner planets. The internal structure of the outer planets. A planetary core consists of the innermost layers of a planet. [1] Cores may be entirely liquid, or a mixture of solid and liquid layers as is the case in the Earth. [2]
Initially, Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe, which consisted only of those planets visible with the naked eye and an outlying sphere of fixed stars. [1] After the acceptance of the heliocentric model in the 17th century, observations by William Herschel and others showed that the Sun lay within a vast, disc-shaped galaxy of ...
The planets as known during classical antiquity: the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Earth analog: A planet or even a superhabitable planet with conditions to be compared with those found on Earth. Hypothetical planet: A planet or similar body whose existence is not proven, but is believed by some to exist.