We all live in a galaxy called the Milky Way, but we can hardly see it. To assess its full scale, we need to look at it from the side. That’s why we only have a small piece of the big picture available for observation. But even that small amount of information we’ve gathered so far is simply astounding.
Here are the top 19 almost unbelievable facts about the Milky Way.
1. The Milky Way is about 120,000 light-years in diameter with a thickening in the center. But its shape is far from being perfectly flat and looks slightly “distorted.”
2. According to the scientists, there are about 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. For comparison, the largest galaxy known to us, IC 1101, has more than 100 trillion stars, which is 500 times more.
3. In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was created when Hera spilled milk while breastfeeding Hercules.
4. The Milky Way has four spiral arms containing most of the stars. All sentient creatures (that we know of) live near the center of the Perseus arm.
5. At the center of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole that is millions of times more massive than our Sun. The Earth is about 27,000 light-years away from that cosmic goodness.
6. While the solar system moves at an average speed of 828,812 km/h, it will still take about 230 million years to orbit the entire Milky Way.
7. Astronomers believe that the stars, planets, asteroids and dust we see make up only a tenth of the total mass of our galaxy. The remaining 90% is the so-called dark matter.
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