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The collection of stars rises close to perpendicular to the plane of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The proposed likely interpretation is that a dwarf galaxy is merging with the Milky Way. This galaxy is tentatively named the Virgo Stellar Stream and is found in the direction of Virgo about 30,000 light-years (9 kpc) away. [237]
Artist's impression of the central bulge of the Milky Way [1] In astronomy , a galactic bulge (or simply bulge ) is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger star formation . The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies (see galactic spheroid ).
The term "The Local Group" was introduced by Edwin Hubble in Chapter VI of his 1936 book The Realm of the Nebulae. [11] There, he described it as "a typical small group of nebulae which is isolated in the general field" and delineated, by decreasing luminosity, its members to be M31, Milky Way, M33, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, M32, NGC 205, NGC 6822, NGC 185, IC 1613 and ...
An artist's conception of the Milky Way. Galactic astronomy is the study of the Milky Way galaxy and all its contents. This is in contrast to extragalactic astronomy, which is the study of everything outside our galaxy, including all other galaxies.
The Milky Way galaxy is a member of an association named the Local Group, a relatively small group of galaxies that has a diameter of approximately one megaparsec. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are the two brightest galaxies within the group; many of the other member galaxies are dwarf companions of these two. [176]
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is contained in the Local Group of more than 54 galaxies. [6] In July 2017 S. Paul, R. S. John et al. defined clear distinguishing parameters for classifying galaxy aggregations as ‘galaxy groups’ and ‘clusters’ on the basis of scaling laws that they followed. [7]
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.
Four of the seven members of galaxy group HCG 16 [1]. A galaxy group [2] or group of galaxies [3] (GrG [4]) is an aggregation of galaxies comprising about 50 or fewer gravitationally bound members, each at least as luminous as the Milky Way (about 10 10 times the luminosity of the Sun); collections of galaxies larger than groups that are first-order clustering are called galaxy clusters. [5]