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The Milky Way

From Encyc
The several dozen galaxies in this diagram, known as the local group represent all the galaxies close enough to the Milky Way that gravitational attraction draws them together.[1] All the rest of the Universe is receding from us. Andromeda, the other large galaxy in this diagram, may collide with the Milky Way, in about ten billion years.

The Milky Way is the galaxy that our Solar System is in.[2] Until Edwin Hubble's work, early in the 20th Century, Astronomers believed the Milky Way was all there was to the Universe. Hubble revealed that some astronomical object]]s, like Andromeda nebula, were also galaxies

There may be about 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.[2]

A popular candy bar containing chocolate, nougat, and caramel is named after the Milky Way.

References

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  1. ↑ "Apocalypse When? Hubble Casts Doubt on Certainty of Galactic Collision". NASA Science. 2025-06-02. Archived from the original on 2025-06-02. Retrieved 2026-07-14. But now a new study using data from Hubble and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope says “not so fast.” Researchers combining observations from the two space observatories re-examined the long-held prediction of a Milky Way – Andromeda collision, and found it is far less inevitable than astronomers had previously suspected.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Maggie Lieu (2026-07-12). "Our map of the Milky Way is wrong!". Space Mog. Archived from the original on 2026-07-13. Retrieved 2026-07-14 – via YouTube. In this video we discuss new findinges that uses archival X-ray observations of gamma ray bursts to create a new map our galaxy the Milky Way and discuss what this means for science.
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