Table of Contents
What universe is bigger than the Milky Way?
The Milky Way is big, but some galaxies, like our Andromeda Galaxy neighbor, are much larger. The universe is all of the galaxies – billions of them! NASA’s telescopes allow us to study galaxies beyond our own in exquisite detail, and to explore the most distant reaches of the observable universe.
Is the Milky Way Big or small?
Size and mass The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group (after the Andromeda Galaxy), with its stellar disk approximately 170,000–200,000 light-years (52–61 kpc) in diameter and, on average, approximately 1,000 ly (0.3 kpc) thick.
How did we determine the size of the Milky Way?
How do we measure the diameter of the Milky Way, given the fact that we live inside of it? We measure the distance to Cepheid variable stars. These are stars whose luminosity changes in a very predictable way because they puff up and shrink.
Is the Milky Way average size?
52,850 light years
Milky Way/Radius
Is Milky Way the biggest galaxy?
Big, but not the biggest And, as I said earlier, while the Milky Way is big, it’s far from being the largest galaxy in space. Our nearest neighbour is the Andromeda Galaxy, which spans 220 000 light years. But they would both be dwarfed by the galaxy IC 1101, one of the largest known galaxies.
What would you use to measure the galaxy?
Answer:
- Radar – measuring distances in our solar system.
- Parallax – measuring distances to nearby stars.
- Cepheids – measuring distances in our Galaxy and to nearby galaxies.
- Supernovae – measuring distances to other galaxies.
- Redshift and Hubble’s Law – measuring distances to objects far, far away.
What is the diameter of the Milky Way in KPC?
about 30 kpc
Distance Information The Milky Way is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (about 100,000 light years or about 30 kpc) across. The Sun does not lie near the center of our Galaxy. It lies about 8 kpc from the center on what is known as the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.