This story is a part of our Cosmic Perspective collection, during which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the remainder of the collection right here. Subscribers can see a bigger model of this map at the backside of the web page.
This map shows the circle of the cosmos that surrounds us, extending to a distance of 200 million mild years. At this scale, area is comprised of clusters of galaxies and voids, the latter being areas with comparatively few galaxies. The Milky Way, at the centre, is an element of the Local Group of galaxies, with the Virgo cluster our nearest neighbour.
Majestic spiral
The Milky Way’s spiral construction is dominated by two major arms known as Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus. It additionally includes a dense area often called the central bar. Our photo voltaic system lies on a extra modest construction known as the Orion spur.
However tangled the query of our metaphorical place in the universe, we will use astronomy to know Earth’s bodily location.
Earth orbits the solar at a distance of 150 million kilometres and the solar orbits the centre of the Milky Way. Specifically, we’re in the Orion arm, round 26,500 mild years from the centre.
The Milky Way resides in the Local Group of galaxies. About 2.5 million mild years away is our closest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, the largest galaxy in the Local Group. Right now, we’re hurtling in direction of Andromeda at greater than 100 kilometres per second; in about 4 billion years, the two galaxies will collide.
The Local Group
That will shake up the Local Group,…