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The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a D 25 isophotal diameter estimated at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years), [10] but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge).
The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. [1] One galactic year is approximately 225 million Earth years . [ 2 ]
The age of the oldest known stars approaches the age of the universe, about 13.8 billion years. Some of these are among the first stars from reionization (the stellar dawn), ending the Dark Ages about 370,000 years after the Big Bang. [1] This list includes stars older than 12 billion years, or about 87% of the age of the universe.
Astronomers using the Gaia space telescope have located two ancient streams of stars that helped the Milky Way galaxy grow and evolve more than 12 billion years ago.
All three would fit neatly inside the present-day Milky Way, which measures about 100,000 light-years across. "The Milky Way continued to grow and evolve over billions of years through mergers ...
Earlier in the 20th century, Hubble and others resolved individual stars within certain nebulae, thus determining that they were galaxies, similar to, but external to, the Milky Way Galaxy. In addition, these galaxies were very large and very far away.
The Milky Way galaxy and the nearby Andromeda Galaxy are moving toward each other at about 130 km/s, and—depending upon the lateral movements—the two might collide in about five to six billion years. Although the Milky Way has never collided with a galaxy as large as Andromeda before, it has collided and merged with other galaxies in the ...
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to spot a Milky Way-like galaxy that formed ... 8 billion years old), and the galaxy’s distinct structure was already in place 2.1 billion years ...