Role of Milky Way in Western Culture

The following sample essay on The Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy containing the Earth, the Solar System, and all the other individual stars visible to the naked eye. It is aspiral galaxy with a bar. The Milky Way, along with Andromeda Galaxy (M31), Triangle Galaxy (M33), and over 40 dwarf galaxies and their companions form the local group of galaxies, which is part of the Local Supercluster (Virgo Supercluster). A good research paper on Milky Way Galaxy has to content detailed description of the name etymology and carefully study the history of the phenomenon.

The writers have to develop all the minor aspects of the topic, covering the subject from all available angles. To make this work easier it may be helpful to use free sample research papers on the topic, which may be regarded as a good guide on the chosen topic. The name of the Milky Way is common for the Western culture and is the same with Lat.

via lacteal: “milky way.” The name of the Galaxy is formed by analogy with other Greek word : “milky.” According to the Greek legend, Zeus decided to make his son Hercules, born of mortal woman, immortal, and left him to his sleeping wife Hera, so that Hercules could drink the divine milk. Hera woke up, saw her feeding a stranger child, and pushed him away. The squirt of the goddess breast milk became the Milky Way.

Some astronomical schools call Milky Way Galaxy simply “our Galaxy” or the Milky Way System; the word “milky way” has been used to refer to the visible.

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Outside of the Western culture, there is a lot of other names for the Milky Way. The word “way” as often as the word “milky” is replaced with other epithets. The diameter of the Galaxy is about 30 thousand parsecs (about 100000 light-years, one kvintillion kilometers) with the estimated average thickness of about 1000 light years. The Galaxy contains, at the lowest estimate, about 200 billion stars. As of January 2009, the mass of the Galaxy was estimated to be 3*1012 solar masses, or 6*1042 kg. Most of the mass of the Galaxy is not in stars and gas, but in the dark matter.

Scientists estimate that the Galactic has a form of a disc, going in different directions around the Galactic Centre, has a diameter of about 100000 light years. Compared to Halo, the disk spins much faster. Rotation speed varies at different distances from the Center. It is increasing rapidly from zero at the center to 200-240 km/s at a distance of 2 thousand light years away from it, then somewhat decreases, to increase again to approximately the same value and remains almost constant. The study of the disk rotation features made it possible to assess its weight, it turned out to be 150 billion times more than M.