Cosmic Ladder: Step 4 - The Milky Way
As we take the next step in our cosmic journey, we move from the local features such as the constellation stars, comets, gaseous nebulae and star clusters to our galaxy as a whole.
From our vantage point inside the galaxy, it appears as a glowing band that flows across the entire sky. One of the most interesting features you can detect with the unaided eye on a dark night away from city lights are the dark rifts that look like dark veins blocking parts of the diffuse background glow. These are caused by non-luminous molecular gases floating in space that block our view of the center of the Milky Way.
From our position in an outer arm of the Milky Way, the center of the galaxy appears in the constellation Sagittarius, visible in the southern sky in the later evening and increasingly earlier over the summer months. Even though our galaxy is around 100,000 light years across, we can still see vast distances across it just with the unaided eye, even though the stars appear as a collective mass rather than individual points.
The Milky Way is probably the most spectacular feature in the sky, if you find yourself with access to a remote moonless night, give yourself plenty of time to adjust to the dark and you won’t be disappointed!
What’s beyond the Milky Way? We’ll find out tomorrow!
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