{"id":218273,"date":"2013-11-20T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"fef1f5469f0f4c2167987b92a923d065"},"modified":"2013-11-20T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T23:00:00","slug":"guide-to-our-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=218273","title":{"rendered":"Guide to our Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2013\/11\/guide_to_our_galaxy\/13409760-3-eng-GB\/Guide_to_our_Galaxy_small.png\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThis virtual journey shows the different components that make up our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains about a hundred billion stars.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt starts at the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and with the stars that orbit around it, before zooming out through the central Galactic Bulge, which hosts about ten billion stars.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe journey continues through a younger population of stars in the stellar disc, home to most of the Milky Way&#8217;s stars, and which is embedded in a slightly larger gaseous disc. Stars in the disc are arranged in a spiral arm pattern and orbit the centre of the Galaxy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe discs and bulge are embedded in the stellar halo, a spherical structure that consists of a large number of globular clusters \u2013 the oldest population of stars in the Galaxy \u2013 as well as many isolated stars. An even larger halo of invisible dark matter is inferred by its gravitational effect on the motions of stars in the Galaxy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLooking at a face-on view of the Galaxy we see the position of our Sun, located at a distance of about 26&nbsp;000 light-years from the Galactic Centre.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nFinally, the extent of the stellar survey conducted by ESA\u2019s Hipparcos mission is shown, which surveyed more than 100&nbsp;000 stars up to 300 light-years away from the Sun. In comparison, ESA\u2019s Gaia survey will study one billion stars out to 30&nbsp;000 light-years away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2013\/11\/guide_to_our_galaxy\/13409760-3-eng-GB\/Guide_to_our_Galaxy_small.png\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThis virtual journey shows the different components that make up our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains about a hundred billion stars.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt starts at the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and with the stars that orbit around it, before zooming out through the central Galactic Bulge, which hosts about ten billion stars.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe journey continues through a younger population of stars in the stellar disc, home to most of the Milky Way&#8217;s stars, and which is embedded in a slightly larger gaseous disc. Stars in the disc are arranged in a spiral arm pattern and orbit the centre of the Galaxy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe discs and bulge are embedded in the stellar halo, a spherical structure that consists of a large number of globular clusters \u2013 the oldest population of stars in the Galaxy \u2013 as well as many isolated stars. An even larger halo of invisible dark matter is inferred by its gravitational effect on the motions of stars in the Galaxy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLooking at a face-on view of the Galaxy we see the position of our Sun, located at a distance of about 26&nbsp;000 light-years from the Galactic Centre.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nFinally, the extent of the stellar survey conducted by ESA\u2019s Hipparcos mission is shown, which surveyed more than 100&nbsp;000 stars up to 300 light-years away from the Sun. In comparison, ESA\u2019s Gaia survey will study one billion stars out to 30&nbsp;000 light-years away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}