COSMIFICATION

By Souhardyo Chakraborty
Class-IV, Heritage Academy School

Milky way (you can say Milky road, Milky way or Via lactial) is a large cluster of over 100 billion stars, planets, gas and dust. Our scientists believe the Milky way is 13.6 billion years old and it is so big that light takes 1,00,000 years to cross from one side to the other. The light in the centre are clouds of gas and dust.But it is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A Star that swallows anything crossing it.

Milky way has 4 billion years to live as after that it will collide with our giant neighbor,Andromeda galaxy.Currently,Andromeda and the Milky way are about 2.5 million light-years apart fueled by gravity.The two galaxies are rushing towards each other with a speed of nearly 4,02,000 KM/HR and with the collision,these galaxies will merge together to form another a giant elliptical-shaped galaxy.

Local group is a group of 30 galaxies.The three largest galaxies in our local group are –

i)Andromeda galaxy

ii)Milky way galaxy

iii)Triangulum galaxy

Source:Dr. Binocs
Image source:Astronomy magazine

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