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What is contained in the Milky Way galaxy?
The Milky Way contains between 100-400 billion stars and at least that many planets. The Milky Way may contain ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars, and a hundred million stellar black holes. Filling the space between the stars is a disk of gas and dust called the interstellar medium.
What does the Milky Way hold?
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is typical: it has hundreds of billions of stars, enough gas and dust to make billions more stars, and at least ten times as much dark matter as all the stars and gas put together. And it’s all held together by gravity.
What makes up most of the Milky Way?
“The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is around 6 million solar masses,” which is really tiny on the scale of the entire mass of the galaxy. And it’s tiny on the scale of the most abundant, mysterious matter in the galaxy: the dark stuff. Again: 84 percent of the galaxy is made up of dark matter.
How many years would it take to cross the Milky Way?
Travel Time At 17.3 km/s, it would take Voyager over1,700,000,000 years to traverse the entire length of the Milky Way. Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take nearly a hundred thousand years!
Is our planet in the Milky Way?
Earth is located in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way (called the Orion Arm) which lies about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the Galaxy. Here we are part of the Solar System – a group of eight planets, as well as numerous comets and asteroids and dwarf planets which orbit the Sun.
Is there anything special about the Milky Way?
The Milky Way contains over 200 billion stars, and enough dust and gas to make billions more. The solar system lies about 30,000 light-years from the galactic center, and about 20 light-years above the plane of the galaxy. More than half the stars found in the Milky Way are older than the 4.5-billion-year-old sun.
Is our solar system in the Milky Way?
Our solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at about 515,000 mph (828,000 kph). We’re in one of the galaxy’s four spiral arms.
Which is the smallest star in the Milky Way?
A red dwarf, which is the smallest classification star we have, is the most abundant type of star in the Milky Way. It’s estimated that about 75% of our galaxy’s stars are red dwarfs.
Does the Milky Way have planets?
Extrapolating out to the rest of the galaxy, scientists estimate that the Milky Way could contain upwards of 50 billion planets, 500 million of which could be in their stars’ habitable zones.
What is the Milky Way galaxy mostly composed of?
The Milky Way consists of a bar-shaped core region surrounded by a warped disk of gas, dust and stars . The mass distribution within the Milky Way closely resembles the type Sbc in the Hubble classification, which represents spiral galaxies with relatively loosely wound arms.
What is the Milky Way made of?
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy which formed about 14 billion years ago, and looks like a large pinwheel rotating in space. Dust, gas and stars fan out from the center of the Milky Way in long spiraling arms. Our galaxy is made of clouds of dust and gas called nebula, stars, comets, meteors, asteroids, and planets.