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Under the Rain of Stars

The Milky Way Galaxy is most significant to humans because it is home sweet home. But when it comes down to it, our galaxy is a typical barred spiral, much like billion of other galaxy in the universe.

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The Milky Way ia a barred spiral galaxy, about 100,000 light-years across. If you could look down on it from the top, you would see a central bulge surrounded by four large spiral arms that warp around it. Spiral galaxies make up about two-third of the galaxies in the universe.

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The Milky Way does not sit still, but is constantly rotating. As such, the arms are moving through space. The sun and the solar system travel with them. The solar system travels at an average speed of 515.000 mph (828,000 km/h). Even at this rapid speed, the solar system would take about 230 million years to travel all the way around the Milky Way.

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Uploaded on April 20, 2019
Taken on July 22, 2017