The Milky Way Galaxy along the galactic plane

A few short stacked exposures of a section of the Carina–Sagittarius Arm (also called the Sagittarius Arm) of the Milky Way Galaxy (imaged along the galactic plane, because we're in the disk of the spiral). Photographed just out of the city's light pollution.

 

About the Milky Way, and Earth's place within it:

The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to have over 400 billion stars. Stars are suns, and just like in our Solar System, many of the stars have planets and moons. Our sun is a middle aged Yellow Dwarf star, located in the Orion Arm (or Orion Spur) of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a minor side spiral arm, located between two larger arms of the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral. The Milky Way is merely one mid-sized barred spiral Galaxy, amongst over 100 billion other Galaxies in the observable Universe. When we look up at the night sky from Earth, we see a glimpse of the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It takes about 250 million years for the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms to complete one rotation.

 

The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars (the latest estimates are substantially higher).

 

Billion Trillion Stars:

1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

 

Milky Way Galaxy map:

Map of the Milky Way on Wikipedia.

 

Astrometry Info:

Annotated Sky Chart for this image.

RA, Dec center: 273.847048183, -13.4455860852 degrees

Orientation: 34.3919484937 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 129.093061598 arcsec/pixel

View this image in the World Wide Telescope.

 

Martin

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