Wednesday, September 17, 2014

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News


219 million stars: Astronomers release most detailed catalog ever made of the visible Milky Way

Posted: 16 Sep 2014 05:48 AM PDT

A new catalog of the visible part of the northern part of our home Galaxy, the Milky Way, includes no fewer than 219 million stars. From dark sky sites on Earth, the Milky Way appears as a glowing band stretching across the sky. To astronomers, it is the disk of our own galaxy, a system stretching across 100,000 light-years, seen edge-on from our vantage point orbiting the Sun. The disk contains the majority of the stars in the galaxy, including the Sun, and the densest concentrations of dust and gas.

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