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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.
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]
The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy. [1] [2] Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, [3] [4] [5] a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center.
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 Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way, where Earth is located. It has a total diameter of roughly 3 megaparsecs (10 million light-years ; 9 × 10 19 kilometres ), [ 1 ] and a total mass of the order of 2 × 10 12 solar masses (4 × 10 42 kg). [ 2 ]
The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy 2.73 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum.It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC 598.With the D 25 isophotal diameter of 18.74 kiloparsecs (61,100 light-years), the Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, behind the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way.
In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of walls of galactic superclusters.These massive, thread-like formations can commonly reach 50 to 80 megaparsecs (160 to 260 megalight-years)—with the largest found to date being the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at around 3 gigaparsecs (9.8 Gly) in length—and form the boundaries between voids ...
Composite image of five galaxies clustered together just 600 million years after the Universe's birth [1]. A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, [1] with typical masses ranging from 10 14 to 10 15 solar masses.