~astro-craze~

I love chocolate. Everyone loves chocolate. The other day when I was munching on a bar of chocolate, it tasted superb and I was flipping the wrapper to see its ingredient. Then the next thing I saw caught my eyes. Its manufactured by Milky Way Corp.

We are actually in the galaxy named, The Milky Way. It is a barred spiral galaxy that is part of the Local Group of galaxies. It is one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Remember I posted something about my previous post, Andromeda? Milky Way is second largest after the Andromeda.

In Latin, the term VIA LACTEA means the pale band of light formed by stars in the galactic plane as seen from Earth. That’s how Milky Way got its name from.

As a galaxy, the Milky Way is actually a giant, as its mass is probably between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses, and its diameter is about 100,000 light years. Radio astronomical investigations of the distribution of hydrogen clouds have revealed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. Therefore, our galaxy has both a pronounced disk component exhibiting a spiral structure, and a prominent nuclear region which is part of a notable bulge or halo component. Decade-long observations have brought up more and more evidence that the Milky Way may also have a bar structure. (hmmm.. Milky way chocolate bar..)

The spiral arms of our Milky Way contain interstellar matter, diffuse nebulae, and young stars and open star clusters emerging from this matter. On the other hand, the bulge component consists of old stars and contains the globular star clusters; our galaxy has probably about 200 globulars, of which we know about 150. 50 of them are yet to be discovered! These globular clusters are strongly concentrated toward the Galactic Centre. From their apparent distribution in the sky, indicates that this centre of the Milky Way lies at a considerable distance in the direction of Sagittarius and not rather close to us, as had been thought previously. ( I’m a Sagittarian =-)).

for more info, log on to

a) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way

b) seds.org/messier/more/mw.html

c)www.space.com/milkyway/