Galaxy's above us.

           1. What is a Galaxy?

    Our sun is just one of a massive collection of two billion stars arranged in a shape like a fried egg,  100,000 light-years across. This collection is called the Galaxy because we see it in the band of stars across the night sky called the Milky Way. But earlier this century it was realized that the Galaxy is just one of millions of similar giant star groups scattered throughout space,  which we also call galaxies. The nearest is The Andromeda Galaxy.  

   2. How many galaxies are there?

   With the largest telescope and most sensitive detectors, we could probably record about a billion galaxies- there may be many,  many more beyond their limits 

     3. What are double stars? 

Our Sun is alone in space, but many stars have one or more nearby companions. Double stars are called binaries. 

       4. Where is the earth? 

The Earth is just over half way out along one of the spiral arms of the Galaxy,  about 30,000 light-years from the center

     5. What is the biggest thing in the universe ?

The biggest structure in the universe is the Great Wall - a great sheet of galaxies 500 million light-years long and 16 million light-years thick.  

        6. What exactly is a nebula? 

Nebula are giant clouds of gas a'd dust spread throughout the galaxies. Some of them we see through telescope because they shine faintly as they reflect straight. With others,  called dark nebula, we see only inky black patches hiding the stars behind. This is were stars are born. A few - called glowing nebula - glow faintly of their own accord as the gas within them is heated by nearby stars. 

      7. What is the milky way ? 

The Milky Way is a pale blotchy white band that stretches right across the night sky. A powerful telescope show it is made of thousands of stars, and is actually an edge-on view of our Galaxy.