This story is a part of our Cosmic Perspective collection, during which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Learn the remainder of the collection right here. Subscribers can see a bigger model of this map on the backside of the web page.
This map exhibits the circle of the cosmos that surrounds us, extending to a distance of 200 million mild years. At this scale, house is comprised of clusters of galaxies and voids, the latter being areas with comparatively few galaxies. The Milky Approach, on the centre, is a component of the Native Group of galaxies, with the Virgo cluster our nearest neighbour.
Majestic spiral
The Milky Approach’s spiral construction is dominated by two primary arms known as Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus. It additionally encompasses a dense area often known as the central bar. Our photo voltaic system lies on a extra modest construction known as the Orion spur.
Nevertheless tangled the query of our metaphorical place within the universe, we are able to use astronomy to understand Earth’s bodily location.
Earth orbits the solar at a distance of 150 million kilometres and the solar orbits the centre of the Milky Approach. Particularly, we’re within the Orion arm, round 26,500 mild years from the centre.
The Milky Approach resides within the Native Group of galaxies. About 2.5 million mild years away is our closest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, the biggest galaxy within the Native Group. Proper now, we’re hurtling in the direction of Andromeda at greater than 100 kilometres per second; in about 4 billion years, the 2 galaxies will collide.
The Native Group
That can shake up the Native Group,…