Milky Way: 10 interesting facts and more about the galaxy –

The Milky Way is nothing more than a galaxy, where our planet and all the others in the solar system meet. The origin of the name comes from the ancient Greeks, who saw it as a trail (or road) of milk that ran through the night sky.

In fact, the Milky Way has always been admired by people throughout history, in addition to filling our eyes with the beautiful astrophotographs that portray it.

However, the population’s general knowledge about this star system and its characteristics is still very limited. Do you want to discover everything about the galaxy we live in?

The Map of My Heaven brings you an astronomical guide for you to admire it more and more, just like we do!

What is galaxy?

The galaxy is characterized by grouping several celestial bodies in the same field, with a common gravitational center.

It’s like a neighborhood: only instead of banks, snack bars and little houses scattered around, we find planets, stars and cosmic dust, for example.

Studying and understanding them has always been quite complex, since we can only identify three with the naked eye: Small Magellanic Cloud, Large Magellanic Cloud and Andromeda.

As space technology developed to incredible levels, discoveries of new galaxies were made – mainly through the project Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which cataloged around 1 million galaxies. Still, it is estimated that there are around 100 billion (yes, BILLIONS) of them throughout the universe.

In the case of the Milky Way, it is classified as a spiral galaxy, which has long arms of stars and clouds of cosmic dust. Structurally speaking, it is composed of three main elements: disc, bulge and halo.

In the disk, there are billions of stars that form these so-called “arms”, also composed of dust and gases. There are two main ones and two secondary ones, which give the spiral shape to our galaxy and the appearance we see on a very dark night.

The bulge is in the same direction as the Sagittarius Constellation and is the central, circular part, where reddish stars are found. It is an extremely dense region, very suitable for the formation of stars and where white dwarfs and black holes are found, for example.

Finally, the halo is a spherical region that covers the entire Milky Way – it contains some very old stars. The formation of new stars stopped as all the gas and dust collapsed in this region.

Milky Way and the Solar System

The creation of the Milky Way occurred “shortly after” the Big Bang – with our galaxy dating back approximately 13.6 billion years, while the supposed origin of our universe would be 13.8 billion years old. Small difference, no?

From there, the cloud that was basically composed of hydrogen, helium and cosmic dust begins to vary gravitationally, releasing other smaller clouds – and giving rise to other galaxies.

Over billions of years, the expansion of temperature, detachment of particles and gaseous movements would have generated the Sun, which also evolved as a star, giving rise to the planets.

After the dismemberment of some solar rings, there was an agglomeration of solidified particles (minerals such as iron, for example), giving rise to the so-called “terrestrial” planets (which have a compact and rocky surface), such as Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

From this type of decomposition, other planets had a greater share of gases in their composition, being called gas planets. They are: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Therefore, around 4.6 billion years ago the solar system took shape, with its planets and satellites gravitating around the giant star that is our source of light and heat: the Sun.

Basically this is the story of the Milky Way and the solar system!

Remembering that our system is a tiny particle within a very immense region, and that it is not yet the only galaxy in the universe. Feeling a little smaller? LOL

Milky Way seen from Earth

The Milky Way can be partially seen from Earth, as long as we are in places without light pollution and in ideal weather conditions (especially in winter, with dry weather).

Astrophotography always seeks to portray our galaxy with all the merit it should have, and the results are simply jaw-dropping.

For example, the photo of Jheison Huerta in the salt flat:

Or that of photographer Miguel Claro, listing visible elements in the center of it:

Or even, our Brazilian and very talented photographer specializing in astrophotography, Marcos Terra, who always portrays the Milky Way with mastery.

Regardless of the technique used and the point of view these professionals have, it is simply incredible to notice how much we can see – and how much our eyes are still not humanly capable of seeing.

Curiosities about the Milky Way

Below, we’ll give you some information about our galaxy that we’re sure you didn’t imagine!

It is made up of around 200 billion stars; The light that we can admire is the mixture of different lights emitted by all this immensity of stars; The first spacecraft that managed to leave the solar system was Voyager 2, in November 2019! Our solar system is in one of the arms of the galaxy, called Orion. There are still many other arms; The entire mass of the Milky Way is estimated to be equivalent to about 1.5 trillion times the mass of the Sun; The Sun is approximately 26,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way (remembering that 1 light year is equivalent to approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers); Its size is about 105,000 light years; To try to cross the Milky Way it would be necessary to use the speed of light, and even then it would take 100 thousand years to complete this “small” walk; At the center of the Milky Way there is a supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A*) that is about 4 million times the mass of the Sun; The brightest part of the galaxy that we can see (full of stars and nebulae) can be found just above the Constellation of Sagittarius;

The Milky Way as a gift

Isn’t it incredible to imagine that we can see a part of the galaxy that houses us?

What if we could see how the universe positioned itself exactly, on a special date for us? Yes, this is possible!

relies on the support of technology to create reliable and accurate star maps, which show how the sky was (or will be) on a given day – be it in the past or in the future.

And the best part: in addition to customizing it with the colors, format and layout you prefer, you can also enter the name of the constellations and guess what? The Milky Way!

Yes, our honoree today has a special highlight on our map and if you choose her, you will be able to constantly admire the galaxy on our celestial map – on an important day for you or someone special.

This way, you will be able to immortalize a moment – ​​which could be a gift for a friend, a gift for a creative boyfriend, a tribute to your mother and so on!

Create a star map that can be themed “the sky when I was born”, “our sky” or simply a celebration of that person’s presence in the universe!

A creative, unique and special gift… and a demonstration of affection that has a grandeur similar to that of our galaxy.

At the end of the day, we all belong somewhere – Earthlings inhabit the Milky Way and some people, our hearts!

And this deserves, of course, an astronomical event of its own! ?