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The discovery of the star in the Milky Way Galaxy suggests that the galaxy may be at least 3 billion years older than previously thought. [265] [266] [267] Several individual stars have been found in the Milky Way's halo with measured ages very close to the 13.80-billion-year age of the Universe.
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]
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 ...
The locations within the Milky Way that have the highest stellar density are the galactic core and the center of globular clusters. A typical mass density for a globular cluster is 70 M Sun pc −3 , which is 500 times the mass density near the Sun. [ 2 ] In the solar neighborhood, the stellar density of a star cluster must be greater than 0.08 ...
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to it, as part of the Milky Way subgroup, which is part of the local galaxy cluster, the Local Group. [ 1 ] There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years ) of the Milky Way, [ 2 ] but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some ...
List of the largest known stars in the Milky Way Star name Solar radius (R ☉) Method [a] Notes Orbit of Saturn: 2,047 – 2,049.9 [10] [b] Reported for reference: Theoretical limit of star size (Milky Way) ≳1,700 [11] L/T eff: Estimated by measuring the fraction of red supergiants at higher luminosities in a large sample of supernova ...
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies [36] [37] [38] and, overall, as many as an estimated 10 24 stars [39] [40] – more stars (and, potentially, Earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth. [41] [42] [43] Other estimates are in the hundreds of billions rather than trillions.
5th century BC – Democritus proposes that the bright band in the night sky known as the Milky Way might consist of stars. 4th century BC – Aristotle believes the Milky Way to be caused by "the ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together" and that the "ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the region of the world which ...