Galaxies in the Space

What are galaxies?

   We know that, the Earth  gravitational force of attraction attracts each and every other to maintain the balance. Similarly in space also the gravitational force of attraction plays an important in holding stars or group of billion of stars close together which is known to be galaxies.They are normally spiral,barred spiral, elliptical and irregular in shape.

   
    The space are filled with infinite number of galaxies, among which some of dominant Galaxies are discussed below:-

  

  Brightest galaxy:- Among millions of galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy is the brightest galaxy, which is about 170,000 light years from earth, having diameter of about 39,000 light years  and is visible only in southern hemisphere.

                     

Milky way galaxy:- The galaxy is named as milky way because the word galaxy  came from the Greek word for milk. Before the invention of powerful  telescope, it is almost impossible to prove that the galaxies are made up of a individual stars, the galaxies appears like a  milky or cloudy areas in the sky.  It is about  100, 000 light years in diameter.

 

Largest Galaxy:- IC 1101 which  is  the central galaxy of the  Abeli 2029 galaxy  cluster,which was discovered  in 1990.  It has diameter of about 5.6million light years, 80 times the diameter of our own galaxy and about 1,070 million light years distant
 from  our earth. Its total  output light is equivalent to 2 trillion times than that of sun.

                                 

              

                       
   Nearest Galaxy:-  Till now the galaxy nearest to  our earth is found to be Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy , which is about
 25,000 light years (236,000,000,000,000,000 km) from the Sun 
         After that the Sagittarius Dwarf which was discovered in 1994 is the 2nd nearest galaxy to our earth, which is about 70,000 light years or more  from earth.

             

                             



Most distant Galaxy:-   At present the galaxy GN-z11 is the most distant galaxy from our earth. It is also known to be the oldest galaxy. It is present in the Ursa major constellation with 13.4 billion light years far away from us.

                               

 
Remotest Galaxy:-  Among  Billions of stars and galaxies in the space, Andromeda Galaxy is visible from our earth through naked eye. It is about 2,309,000 light years from earth, having 300 billion stars  within it and possessing a diameter of about 180,000 light years.

                        
                                                                                       

Some commonly asked questions:

 

1)Who do research on stars planets and galaxies in the space?

Ans:- Astronomer is the branch of science which deals  in research of space, planets, stars, etc about Astronomy.