Posted on 05/13/2025 1:16:19 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the top? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies, our Milky Way has distinct spiral arms. Our Sun and most of the bright stars we see at night are in just one arm: Orion. Gaia data bolsters previous indications that our Milky Way has more than two spiral arms. Our Galaxy's center sports a prominent bar. The colors of our Galaxy's thin disk derive mostly from dark dust, bright blue stars, and red emission nebula. Although data analysis is ongoing, Gaia was deactivated in March after a succession mission.
Billions and billions….
Likely something that passed nearby and had gravitational pull millions of years ago. It could also be pull from the nearby dwarf galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Wow, thank you. It caught my eye right away and made me wonder what could be twisting it that way. Seems to be equal pull in opposing directions but not in the middle. That is pretty wild how it can be throughout the horizontal plane of all the bars and all bodies in the bars together like that evenly.
I wonder if it is a stationary pull and as the bars rotate by they bend as they go by those spots and then back to flat plane? That would add another whole axis of travel up and back down as it goes by the opposing spots wouldn’t it? An added wave action.
And since it is affecting the outer diameter that wave action would also be moving us up and down aside from just a horizontal rotation plane... Of course it is slow but still an added movement though a Galactic year cycle.
Thank you!
Guess I should have said Spiral Arms not Bars... :)
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