More than a hundred years ago, astronomers believed that the Milky Way was the entire universe. There are about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and about twice as many planets, so it’s no wonder scientists have made that mistake. The Milky Way is just one of the billions of galaxies in the universe.
1. According to legend, once the Chumaks traveled for salt to the Crimea, they were guided by the night sky, so because of that, the most popular name of our galaxy in Ukraine was Chumackij Shlyah.
2. In ancient Rome and Greece, the Milky Way was called the Milky River.
3. In India, our galaxy is called Akash Ganga, which from Sanskrit translates as “Ganges of Heaven.”
4. According to ancient Chinese myth, the gods raised the river to heaven, so the Milky Way appeared, and that’s why in China it is called “the River of Heaven”.
5. It is best to observe the Milky Way while away from artificial light sources. Due to the small number of people in Antarctica, light pollution is not very significant here, so it is one of the best places to fully enjoy the view of our galaxy, even with the naked eye.
6. The Earth is located on the outskirts of the Milky Way, the distance to the center of our galaxy is over 8.5 kpc or over 27,000 light-years. To better understand the dimensions of the Milky Way, imagine that the diameter of the solar system is only 1 mm, then the size of our galaxy would be over 85 km.
7. The size of our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and although it is extremely large, even on a cosmic scale, scientists have known much larger astronomical objects. The Milky Way is nine times smaller than the Messier 87 galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Even larger is the Hercules A, whose size exceeds 1.5 million light-years.
8. If the Earth were orbiting the Sun at the same speed as the stars orbiting the center of the Milky Way, then the year would last 3 days instead of 365.
9. Scientists today have no way of taking a photo of the Milky Way outside. The solar system is at almost equal distance from the center of our galaxy and its edge (the distance to the center is about 27 thousand light-years), so any photos of the Milky Way Galaxy are either an image of another galaxy or a reproduction of a talented artist.
10. Most people think of our galaxy as a huge flat disk, but in fact, the disk is far from perfect. Investigating similar galaxies, scientists have come to the conclusion that the Milky Way has a curved shape, due to the gravitational interaction with neighboring galaxies Large and Small Magellanic Cloud.
11. A similar gravitational distortion has a helical galaxy ESO 510-G13 in the constellation Hydra. Due to its interaction with neighboring galaxies, the equator forms a deformed disk, and probably similar deformation also occurs in our galaxy.
12. The orbital speed of the Solar System around the center of the Milky Way is about 220 km/s, or 0.073% of the speed of light. This means the sun has looped around the galaxy about 20 times in its five billion year lifetime.
13. The Milky Way rotates at a speed of about 270 kilometers per second. So the actual location in the space where you were an hour ago is now 972,000 km away.
14. In the center of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. The mass of our galaxy is approximately 4.3 million times greater than the mass of the Sun.
15. Scientists believe that the mass of our galaxy is 90% composed of dark matter, which means that all objects that we can see with the naked eye or with the help of a telescope – make up only 10% of the mass of the Milky Way.
16. The oldest known star in our galaxy is the red giant in the constellation of Libra – HE 1523-0901. Scientists believe that the star formed shortly after the Big Bang and is only half a billion years younger than the Universe. It is 7500 light-years away from Earth and is about 13.2 billion years old.
17. When we see the Milky Way in the night sky, in reality, only about 0.0000025% of the billions of stars in our galaxy are available to our eyesight.
18. The Milky Way is constantly growing as it merges with other smaller galaxies. The Milky Way is currently absorbing stars from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy.
19. To leave the Milky Way Galaxy, stars or any other object requires an extraordinary amount of energy. The facility is expected to reach speeds in excess of 1.5 million km / h. Today, astronomers have recorded less than two dozen giant blue stars thrown outside our galaxy.
20. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to collide in around 4.5 billion years, merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy or a large lenticular galaxy.
