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The Dark Horse Nebula or Great Dark Horse (sometimes called the Prancing Horse) is a large dark nebula that, from Earth's perspective, obscures part of the upper central bulge of the Milky Way. The Dark Horse lies in the equatorial constellation Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer), near its borders with the more famous constellations Scorpius and ...
The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7] [8] [9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 or B33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion. [2] The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex.
Lomberg's Milky Way portrait as background for Kepler Mission diagram. The Smithsonian Institution commissioned Lomberg in the early 1990s to paint "A Portrait of the Milky Way" , a scientifically accurate artistic representation of the Milky Way galaxy as seen by a hypothetical observer from a vantage point 10 degrees above the galactic plane ...
Group of at least 80 galaxies of which the Milky Way is a part. Dominated by Andromeda (the largest), the Milky Way and Triangulum; the remainder are dwarf galaxies. [39] Local Sheet: 7 Mpc 2.16×10 20: Group of galaxies including the Local Group moving at the same relative velocity towards the Virgo Cluster and away from the Local Void. [40] [41]
The nature of the Milky Way's bar, which extends across the Galactic Center, is also actively debated, with estimates for its half-length and orientation spanning between 1–5 kpc (short or a long bar) and 10–50°. [23] [25] [27] Certain authors advocate that the Milky Way features two distinct bars, one nestled within the other. [28]
The Milky Way Galaxy has a diameter of 100,000–200,000 light-years and is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars and at least that number of planets. The Solar System is located on the inner edge of one of the Milky Way's spiral arms, about 27,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, which the Sun orbits with a period of 240 million ...
[1] [2] For example, the asterism known as the Big Dipper or the Plough comprises the seven brightest stars in the constellation Ursa Major. Another asterism is the triangle, within the constellation of Capricornus. Asterisms range from simple shapes of just a few stars to more complex collections of many stars covering large portions of the sky.