Celestial Objects

The Universe

Galaxies

they contain

  • stars,

  • dust,

  • gas, and

  • other celestial bodies

They are bound together by gravitational forces

  • 100,000 to 3,000,000,000,000 stars

There are three major types

  • spiral (with arms)
  • elliptical (no arm)

  • irregular (without rotational symmetry)
 

The Earth, Sun and the rest of our solar system are a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy, a spiral galaxy.



The Milky way Galaxy is just one galaxy in a group of galaxies called the Local Group.

  • Within the Local Group, the Milky Way Galaxy is moving about 300 km/sec (towards the constellation Virgo).
 
  • The galaxy that is nearest to our galaxy may is the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy,
  • It is about 24 kiloparsecs or 80,000 light years from us.
  • The Large Magellanic Cloud is another close galaxy; it is about 50 kiloparsecs from us.

Extremes

Follow this link to go to the text only version of nasa.gov

 

 

 

WEIGHT

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Copyright © 2005 -  S. B. EglI