世界各地有許多創造天地的神話圍繞著銀河系發展出來。很特別的是，在希臘就有兩個相似的希臘神話故事在解釋銀河是怎麼來的。有些神話將銀河和星座結合在一起，認為成群牛隻的乳液將深藍色的天空染白了。在東亞，人們相信在天空中群星間的霧狀帶是銀色的河流，也就是所謂天河。

NSF is really an independent federal company developed by Congress in 1950 to market the progress of science. NSF supports fundamental investigate and folks to develop information that transforms the longer term.

Two spiral arms, the Scutum–Centaurus arm and the Carina–Sagittarius arm, have tangent points inside the Solar's orbit about the center of your Milky Way. If these arms comprise an overdensity of stars in comparison with the normal density of stars during the Galactic disk, It could be detectable by counting The celebs close to the tangent position.

With impressive telescopes, radio observations, and Room missions like Gaia, we now map billions of stars and trace the composition of our galactic residence with unparalleled precision.

A analyze in 2020 concluded that Gaia detected a wobbling movement of the galaxy, which could be caused by "torques from a misalignment of the disc's rotation axis with respect to the principal axis of a non-spherical halo, or from accreted make a difference while in the halo acquired through late infall, or from close by, interacting satellite galaxies as well as their consequent tides".

This galactic cannibalism continues right now; even now, the Milky Way is devouring more compact companions similar to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. Over billions of a long time, this kind of mergers have shaped the galaxy’s progress and composition.

The Milky Way isn’t just huge; it’s also wonderfully structured. It's a flat, disk-like condition full of billions of stars, which generate spiral arms that wrap across the Centre. Picture a massive spinning document, but in lieu of grooves, it has glowing stars!

Probably the most putting functions you'll be able to see in a truly dim sky—a single with out light-weight pollution—will be the band of faint white light known as the Milky Way, which stretches from 1 horizon to one other. The name arises from an ancient Greek legend that as opposed its faint white splash of sunshine to a stream of spilled milk.

But reconstructing The form and composition of our individual galactic home was slow and tiresome. The method included building catalogs of stars, charting their positions during the sky and pinpointing how considerably from Earth they are. 

The halo also retains streams of stars—the stays of dwarf galaxies torn apart by tidal forces because the Milky Way absorbed them.

Inside of it lie stories older than Earth itself—tales of birth and Dying of stars, of mysterious invisible matter, of a monstrous black gap lurking silently at its Centre. To know the Milky Way is to know in which we come from and in which we have been likely.

This made an intriguing streak of fuel, dust along with other elements flowing into your bigger galaxy, noticeable even from Earth.

All the things else inside the galaxy revolves about this potent gateway to nothingness. In มาวินเบท its instant environment is usually a tightly packed area of dust, gasoline and stars known as the galactic bulge.

Over and above the thin disk of the galaxy lies the halo, a vast spherical location populated by historic stars and globular clusters—dense, spherical swarms of approximately a million stars orbiting like satellites around the galactic Centre.