Information Links

Q: How Do You Find A Star ?

Galloway Stargazing

Stargazing

Constellations

Galaxy

The Universe

Light-Travel Time and Distance VT

ISS

NASA

Our Moon

Other Photo's

Video Clips

Education Links

Place Your

Advertising Here

GNS Podcasting

Advertise Your
Company
Here

Three UK Dark Sky Places

@gallowayforest - SW Scotland Home Webpage

@Sark_Island - Channel islands Home Webpage

@ExmoorNP - SW England Home Webpage

Twitter: @IDADarkSky @DarkSkyPark

Our Galaxy

Our Sun and all the stars visible in the night sky are members of a vast aggregation of stars known as the Galaxy (given a capital G to distinguish it from any other galaxy). Our Galaxy is spiral in shape, with arms composed of stars and nebulae winding outwards from a central bulge of stars. It is about 100,000 light years in diameter; the Sun lies in a spiral arm 30,000 light years from the Galaxy's centre. Astronomers estimate that the Galaxy contains some250,000 million stars.
 

Most of the stars in the Galaxy lie in a disk about 2000 light years thick. Seen from our position within the Galaxy, this disk of stars appears as a faint, hazy band crossing the sky on clear, dark nights. We call this band the Milky Way, and the name Milky Way is often used for our entire Galaxy. The starfields of the Milky Way are particularly dense in the region of Sagittarius, which is the direction of the Galaxy's centre.

Our Galaxy has two small companion galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. To the naked eye they appear like detached portions of the Milky Way, in the southern constellations Dorado and Tucana. The Large Magellanic Cloud contains about a tenth the number of stars in our Galaxy and lies about 170,000 light years from us. The Small Magellanic Cloud has only about a fifth as many stars  as the Large Magellanic Cloud, and lies somewhat farther off, about 200,000 light years. Both clouds contain numerous star  clusters and bright nebulae, and are rich territories for sweeping with instruments of all sizes. One can but imagine the magnificent view of our Galaxy that any astronomers living in the Magellanic Clouds would have.
 

Countless other galaxies are dotted like islands in the Universe as far as the largest telescopes can see. Most galaxies are members of clusters containing up to thousands of galaxies. Our own Milky Way is the second-largest member of a small cluster of some three dozen galaxies known as the Local Group.

The largest galaxy in the Local Group is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy, elongated patch in the constellation Andromeda. The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to contain about twice as many stars as our own Galaxy, and to be about 25 per cent greater in diameter. It lies about 2.5 million light years away. Long-exposure photographs reveal that the Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral, but tilted so that we see it almost edge-on. One day Andromeda Galaxy will join our Galaxy.

Rhinns of Galloway Amateur Astronomers Society

NightSky Galloway

NightSky Galloway

Facebook And Twitter

#DarkSkyPark

New Observatory For Galloway Dark Park

Coming Soon

Dumfries Astronomy Society

Astronomy meetings and stargazing nights in Dumfries

Dumfries Astronomy Society

- -

Satellite TV antenna dish aiming angle / pointing calculator for the UK,

England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland

www.satsig.net/maps/satellite-tv-dish-pointing-uk-ireland

Join GallowayNightSky in 2012 on Earth Hour

GALLOWAYNIGHTSKY MARS PROJECT 2011

Galloway Dark Park in South West Scotland, United Kingdom,

On Sale on Amazon

Advertising by GNS

LOOKING FOR A

Planisphere
Link Above

Download Below

Stellarium

Info Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer.

It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors.

Just set your coordinates and go.

GallowayNightSky

Podcast@gallowaynightsky.co.uk

Advertise Your
Company
Here