Time Travel: The Milky Way  

 


Streifenverzierung
   
 
 

THE MILKY WAY
25,000 light years
 

relative to the galactic center

Almost anything we can see in the night sky with the naked eye is part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Its shape is not directly visible to us, but its center is hidden where the greatest number of stars is concentrated. The stars of the Milky Way form a gigantic disc, and because we are located in the plain of this disc, we can see a dim band of stars divide the sky in two halves on a dark and moonless night.


The Milky Way consists of about a hundred billion stars, and it takes 220 million years for one rotation. From its center, regions where new stars form spiral outwards, and in its center, everything revolves around a Black Hole, which compresses matter, emitting intense x-ray radiation.
Our Galaxy is a true marvel, consisting of an inconceivable number of stars – but if we look beyond it, as far as the most advanced telescopes can reach, we see thousands of galaxies wherever we look, and many of them are still bigger than our Milky Way.

 
 
 
28 July 2008, Achik Tash/Kirgistan at 3500 m altitude, focal length 50 mm, f/1.8, exposure time 10 seconds