I can’t seem to shake this need to understand the universe lately, so I went looking for more answers. I found this amazing view of the Milky Way Galaxy and added a few notes of my own:
This artists rendition was released by NASA and JPL-Caltech on June 6th, 2008. The data that was gathered from the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) was used to create this amazing view of our galaxy.
“Like early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Using infrared images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way’s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Previously, our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms…
Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms. ”
The Earth is moving HOW FAST?
It’s one thing to see our insanely small place in the universe, it’s another to find out just what is going on right now. We are traveling at an incredible speed through our galaxy. This quote from NASA sums it up:
“… the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation. This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there?”
You can check out the official quote from NASA if you’re interested.