Thursday, February 18, 2010

When we take a look of clear night sky full of twinkling stars with more or less same intensity i know that th?

ey all belong to milky way galaxy, but at what distance they are from Earth in terms of LIGHT yEAR ON an average?When we take a look of clear night sky full of twinkling stars with more or less same intensity i know that th?
The stars do not have the same (even more or less) the same intensity. Some are just intrinsically bright, but far away; whilst other are intrinsically dim, but relatively close by. You're right in saying that they are part of the Milky Way though.





The Milky Way has long been considered as a normal spiral galaxy; but it is now believed to be a barred spiral galaxy. The bar is around 12,000ly long, and the whole Galaxy is around 120,000ly across. The Sun in one of the spiral arms, called the Sagitarrius Arm. We are about 24,000ly from the Galactic Centre (the centre of the Milky Way).





So, there are stars in our Galaxy that are thousands of light-years away. We cannot see these, even if they are extremely bright, (unless, maybe they go supernova) because they are so far away, and dust in our Galaxy blocks the light. The closest stars are a few tens of light-years away. So the range is from a few tens, to a few tens of thousands of light-years away.





Interestingly, if you say a star is maybe the size of a pinhead, then on the same scale there is maybe only one or two other stars in a large room. But if you say that about a galaxy, that one is the size of a pinhead, then you could fit virtually the entire visible universe into a large room.





The distances between stars is vastly greater than the distances between galaxies on the same scale.When we take a look of clear night sky full of twinkling stars with more or less same intensity i know that th?
In the Milky Way Galaxy, particularly in the disc, stars are on average separated by 4 light-years. On the bulge however, stars are more crowded.Some sites say there is a star per cubic light-year on the galactic bulge.
they are not all part of the Milky Way galaxy. An average is very hard to compute. the number (and distance) of stars that can been seen with the naked eye varies with weather conditions and the site one is observing from.
most stars are within 2 million lightyears, I think.

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