THE MILKY WAY BY: ANNALISE MACRIYIANNIS 6M

DEFINITION The Milky Way: Is a galaxy in our solar system and it has billions of stars and we can see them in a band going across the sky. In the night we can see the body of the Milky Way. What is the Milky Way?

What is the Milky Way? Definition Definition The Milky Way is a spiral shaped galaxy and it has up to 400 billion stars and from the top it looks like a giant Danish with swirls of white icing and from the side it looks like two fried eggs back to back. It also has parts to it such as the Nuclear Bulge which is directed in the centre, it is recognized as the two egg yolks, the Disk that is flattened and it rotates around the sun and other stars and it sits 2/3 away from the sun and last is the Halo it has the oldest stars in it and it is around the Milky Way. The Halo is filled with very hot gases. What is that?

What is the Milky Way made of? The Milky Way is made of dust, gas that are held together by gravity and mainly stars and all of that floats around it, because there is like a city of stars so big the speed of a light would take 100,000 years to travel across all those stars!! So it’s like a whole bunch of stars really and the sun which is a star! How old is the Milky Way? How big is the Milky Way? WOW!

Who discovered the Milky Way? How did it get it’s name? Our Milky Way was first discovered by an ancient Greek philosopher, who was the first person to record that the Milky Way did really exist and it was made up of billions of bright shinning stars. The name Milky Way came from the band of white light you can see across the night sky in the shape of a patch and here in the southern part of Australia the centre passes us right across so we can have an excellent view of the galaxy.

How old is the Milky Way? How big is the Milky Way? The Milky Way is more that 13 billion years old. In the middle of the 18 th century people came up with the idea that this Milky Way was a galaxy of stars! It also has been measured to be as old as the entire universe it’s self. It has a circumference of light years which means in space terms very far away and a light year is about 9,460 billion kilometers. The Milky Way is too big to even imagine because the world’s fastest jet which is the Blackbird would take approximately 30 billion years to go across the galaxy! What is the Milky Way made of?

How far away is the Milky Way from earth? Our home galaxy is not far away from us we are actually inside the milky way because the sun rotates in the centre of the galaxy with a speed of half a million miles per hour and 225 million years WOW!!! I think the Milky Way is a very interesting galaxy that is in our solar system because there is a lot of good information to read and look at in books or the internet!!!! The Milky Way

Bibliography The Visual Dictionary of the Universe Eyewitness Visual Dictionaries Earth and Space Anita Ganen John Malam Clare Oliver Adam Hibbert Who discovered the Milky Way and how did it get it's name? THE END!!!