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Astronomy: Milky Way Galaxy
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Our solar system is part of a - believed - disk shaped galaxy we call the Milky Way Galaxy. Most bright stars in our galaxy reside in a disk, just like our Sun. Our Milky Way is similar shaped like our neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy, although our Milky Way is somewhat smaller. In our neighbourhood are around 30 galaxies, which we refer to as the Local Group of galaxies. If you want to observe the Milky Way Galaxy, the galaxy is seen as a band of stars in the sky. This band is also known as 'a milky band', a band of white dust and stars which stretches across the sky. A black holeThe following two pictures illustrate the complex center of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 26.000 light-years away.First you see an annoted picture of our Galaxy. The second picture was constructed in 1999 by radio astronomers. It was obtained from 1 meter wavelength radio data by telescopes of the Very Large Array near Socorro in New Mexico USA.  The next picture illustrates our galactic center at the edge of the extremely bright object named Sagittarius A. Orbiting the center are about 200 globular clusters with 100.000 stars each. And on high resolution images you can discern thousands of individual stars within only a one light-year wide region. The 10 light-days center is estimated to have a mass of 3 million times our Sun. It contains a supermassive black hole, which was suspected already for years, from the fast oribiting center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Of course, because the black hole isn't visible, the confirmation of the black hole was based upon observations of X-rays emissions. X-rays emitting from Sagittarius A on October 26, 2000 told astronomers the black hole was eating mass. The X-ray radio source for minutes was 45 times stronger than normal. This is enough to conclude that also our Galaxy has a black hole in its center.  Along the galactic plane which runs diagonally through the image are tortured clouds of gas energized by hot stars and round-shaped supernova remnants (SNR) - hallmarks of a violent and energetic cosmic environment. Related subjects>> Spacemap: from the Local Group of galaxies until Earth>> M31 Andromeda Galaxy >> The Universe >> The Sun |
 Normal view of the Milky Way Galaxy  An X-ray look from the orbiting Chandra Observatory reveals the stars under the cosmic dust clouds in the center disk of our Galaxy. |
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