How did we know the shape of our galaxy, the milky way when we are actually in it?
117937
Actually you can look at all the other stars in our galaxy and via rather simple mathematics make a point of view outside the galaxy. So, more or less, making a simple computer program for it and feeding it all the coordinates that we have on the other stars, then adding our own star as 0,0,0 and voila - a picture of the galaxy and an arrow pointing at us.
763882
A galaxy is a swirling collection of stars. our own Milky Way galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, of which our sun is only one amongst these billions and billions.\n\nA solar system is just a single sun that has planets revolving around it. A galaxy is made up of billions of such suns. And some scientists believe that as many as 25% of the stars could have planets. That means billions and billions of solar systems in our own galaxy.\n\nHere'a a picture of our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. It has close to one-trillion stars.\n\nHope this heolps. Cheers\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy
777198
the Milky Way is a galaxy
650212
The universe encloses all the stars and galaxies...so the answer is...we would see the universe. By the way, if I was that far out there and looking back, I'd be worried about what was sneaking up behind me.
1100180
Well that is really hard to answer, A point 13 billion light years as referenced from what? Remember that they earth is in orbit around the sun, the sun is in orbit around the galaxy, the galaxy itself is moving.\nIf we assume the universe is about 15 billion years old the universe was quite a bit smaller. So obviously the object would have been closer. But are you talking about something that is moving towards us? moving away? we need some reference point to even begin thinking about answering this question.\n\nThis is like asking "how far away was a car moving 60 miles an hour, and hour ago?" was the car coming towards us, away, moving parallel, are we in another car? how fast are we travelling?\n\nDo you see that you need to qualify your answer, in order for us to answer it.
998170
Our solar system is tucked into a corner of the galaxy where the stars are scattered far from each other.\n\nThe stars are denser closer to its centre.
148399
A real good question, but one that I've never seen any kind of discussion about. It would be close to impossible to determine our Sun's galactic orbit because there are just too many variables involved that would periodically change the orbit--gravitational disturbances by other stars, galaxies, and varying densities as we traverse the spiral arms, etc.,. Also, it takes our Sun some 250-million years to make one complete orbit and we haven't been around long enough to get any kind of reliable idea of current orbital parameters.
530869
If you mean our Solar system (there's other suns with planets revolving around them) then our Solar System is in our Galaxy...The Milky Way.
1171072
Not at all.  The Milky Way, Andromeda and a few other galaxies are in the "local group".  The galaxies in this group orbit around each other.  Just like our planets.  At times some planets will be seen to recede from us and at other times they will be getting closer as all go along in their respective orbits.
818302
Firstly- 'miles' aren't the useful unit of measure here- they're far too small.\n\nWhile the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter- you don't need to travel 100,000 light years in order to leave it.  It's fairly flat- like a record er... uh.. .I mean CD.  Plus- we're about 2/3'rds of the way out on an arm.  So- you can leave in the plane of the galaxy and be pretty much outside of it in 20,000 light years.  Or- go out normal to (perpendicular to) the plane, and be out in about 5,000 light years.
13860
All the objects in the Milky Way Galaxy orbit their common center of mass, called the Galactic Center. It includes the constellations Sagittarius, Scorpius, Ophiuchus and Scutum. For a great link that gives you a lot of specifics, including a map of the center check the sources below.
333652
Once you leave the Milky Way you are not outside the universe. The Milky Way Galaxy is one of many known galaxies in the universe. There are probably billions we don't know about. "Goodness knows where" is inter-galactic space.\n\nInfinity means "forever". It is not necessarily a measurable distance or time. We're not sure if the whole universe is infinite. We can't even see most of what is out there. The estimated size of the observable universe is 7.4x10^26m (that's really, really, really, really big). Beyond that we're not sure yet.
890850
Yes, our galaxy (and the local group) is generally heading in the direction of the virgo cluster of galaxies. All together, we are moving in the direction of a much larger structure called the 'Great Attractor' that is in the direction of the constallation of Centaurus. I'm guessing that this is what you heard about.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor
620196
In this huge galaxy called the Milky Way, the posibilities are great. The problem is knowing were to look and being lucky to find that "needle in a hay stack".\n\nWe're here, and maybe if other beings exist, they may never find us either.\n\nThe answer is to believe and continue to explore our galaxy with optical and radio telescopes. And untill humanity can explore fisicaly and populate other worlds, or just stay here and awate the end of life.
689887
The Andromeda galaxy was the first one to have individual stars seen in the big telescopes in the early 20th century. Studying those individual stars helped determine the distance to the galaxy and the idea that galaxies are like islands with huge amounts of stars, not just clusters within our own galaxy (Milky Way). This was done by Hubble.\n\nBy the way it is the closest major galaxy to us, but there is a small family of about 30 known galaxies, mostly small, that Andromeda and our galaxy are a part of. Called the "Local Group". Many of these are closer to us than Andromeda.\n\nIn a small telescope and dark skies away from the city, you can see two dwarf galaxies near Andromeda. By the way don't get a telescope from Walmart or Ebay or the Shopping Network, those are junk. Check out Orion Telescopes on the web, via mail order. (I'm not affiliated with them).
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"Our own Milky Way, a typical giant spiral galaxy, includes at least 100 billion stars in its diameter." \n100 billion\n\nEncyclopedia Britannica. Astronomy. 2000. "There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy" \n100 billion\n\nEddington, A. S. The Interior of a Star. 1926. "The Sun belongs to a system containing some 3,000 million stars." 3 billion\n\nBoorstein, Daniel J. Discovery of the World. New York: Random House, 1983: 320. "...the Galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters."\ninnumerable\n\nButterworth, Paul. Stars in Our Galaxy. Ask a High-Energy Astronomer. 1998. "We can only see a few thousand stars at most with our unaided eyes. These are a mixture of stars which are nearby, and bright stars which are further away; but they are only a tiny fraction of the 100,000,000,000 stars in our own galaxy." \n100 billion
845717
An international team of astronomers from France, Italy, the UK and Australia has found a previously unknown galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way. This newly-discovered galaxy takes the record for the nearest galaxy to the centre of the Milky Way. Called the Canis Major dwarf galaxy after the constellation in which it lies, it is about 25000 light years away from thesolar system and 42000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way. This i closer than the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, discovered in 1994, which is also colliding with the Milky Way. The discovery shows that the Milky Way is building up its own disk by absorbing small satellite galaxies. The research is to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society within the next few weeks.\n\nThe discovery of the Canis Major dwarf was made possible by a recent survey of the sky in infrared light (the Two-Micron All Sky Survey or "2MASS"), which has allowed astronomers to look beyond the clouds of dust in the disk of the Milky Way. Until now, the dwarf galaxy lay undetected behind the dense disk. "It's like putting on infrared night-vision goggles," says team-member Dr Rodrigo Ibata of Strasbourg Observatory. "We are now able to study a part of the Milky Way that has been previously out of sight".\n\nThe new dwarf galaxy was detected by its M-giant stars =AD cool, red stars that shine especially brightly in infrared light. "We have used these rare M-giant stars as beacons to trace out the shape and location of the new galaxy because its numerous other stars are too faint for us to see," explains Nicolas Martin, also of Strasbourg Observatory. "They are particularly useful stars as we can measure their distances, and so map out the three-dimensional structure of distant regions of the Milky Way disk." In this way, the astronomers found the main dismembered corpse of the dwarf galaxy in Canis Major and long trails of stars leading back to it. It seems that streams of stars pulled out of the cannibalised Canis Major galaxy not only contribute to the outer reaches of the Milky Way's disk, but may also pass close to the Sun.\n\nAstronomers currently believe that large galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their present majestic proportions by consuming their smaller galactic neighbours. They have found that cannibalised galaxies add stars to the vast haloes around large galaxies. However, until now, they did not appreciate that even the disks of galaxies can grow in this fashion. Computer simulations show that the Milky Way has been taking stars from the Canis Major dwarf and adding them to its own disk - and will continue to do so.\n\n"On galactic scales, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is a lightweight of about only one billion Suns," said Dr. Michele Bellazzini of Bologna Observatory. "This small galaxy is unlikely to hold together much longer. It is being pushed and pulled by the colossal gravity of our Milky Way, which has been progressively stealing its stars and pulling it apart." Some remnants of the Canis Major dwarf form a ring around the disk of the Milky Way.\n\n"The Canis Major dwarf galaxy may have added up to 1% more mass to our Galaxy," said Dr Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney. "This is also an important discovery because it highlights that the Milky Way is not in its middle age - it is still forming." "Past interactions of the sort we are seeing here could be responsible for some of the exquisite detail we see today in the structure of the Galaxy," says Dr Michael Irwin of the University of Cambridge.