The first thing that comes to our mind when we talk about galaxies is the word ‘Milky Way’. Yes…It is the most famous galaxy in the universe. The Solar System, in which we live in, is only a tiny part of the Milky Way galaxy and is at a distance of 25,000 light years from its centre. So, what is a galaxy..??
A galaxy is a group of stars, dust and gas bound together by Gravity. Scientists estimate that there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe. The smallest galaxies contain less than a billion stars while the largest ones contain upto 3000 billion stars. Only three galaxies can be seen outside the Milky Way with the naked eye – The Andromeda (2 million light years away), The Large Magellanic Cloud (160,000 light years away) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (180,000 light years away). A Light Year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in a year. Like I said, we are dealing with enormous distances. These galaxies differ in size and shape. The diameter of the galaxies varies from a few thousand to a half - million light years.
For enthusiastic Star Gazers: Try spotting the Andromeda Galaxy – For this you need a nice pair of Binoculars. First locate the Great Square of Pegasus in the northern sky, spot the star Mirach which is to the left of the bright star Alpheratz. Then locate a fairly bright star slightly above Mirach and continue to move your binoculars in that direction until you find the ‘Little Cloud’ – The Great Andromeda.
0 comments:
Post a Comment