What is the name of our galaxy? Anatomy of a great spiral

Any schoolboy knows about what our galaxy is called. But it was not always so. The Milky Way - a huge empire consisting of hundreds of billions of gravitationally connected star systems - is our cosmic homeland. He always attracted the attention of humanity and caused his burning interest. Virtually all ancient peoples and states had their own answer to the question of what is called our galaxy.

In some countries of the ancient world the Milky Way called the Dear Gods, in others - the Star Bridge. For example, in ancient China the name "Celestial River" was used. Unity in this issue was not then. But in any case in all corners of the ancient world the Milky Way was considered sacred. Temples were built in his honor, he was worshiped.

The scientific history of studying the Milky Way is at least two thousand years. And now it is considered unthinkable not to know what is called our galaxy, because the fateful questions about how life was born and what awaits us in the future are inseparable from this concept. Only in the foreseeable part of the universe there are about two hundred billion galaxies.

Each of them is unique in its structure, huge in size and constantly in motion. Galaxies are aggressive. They are born as a result of great cosmic catastrophes and are killed by the same violent death. Galaxies are a real starry cradle. The stars that give life to our Universe, illuminate and warm it, are born into the vast galactic accumulations of gas and dust, this building material of all heavenly bodies.

One of such incredible giant cosmic formations is our starry house - the Milky Way. Most of the scientific history of mankind's unity in the question of what is called our galaxy, was not. Moreover, for a long time scientists considered the Milky Way to be the only galaxy in the universe, a kind of islet of prosperity in a boundless and lifeless cosmic ocean.

But in 1924 Erwin Hubble, observing the starry sky with the help of the most perfect telescope of that time, changed the general idea. He noticed vague clouds of light deep in space and concluded that he had discovered not single objects, but entire stellar conglomerates outside the Milky Way. Thus, Hubble revolutionized astronomy and brought to a new level the study of the structure of our galactic house.

The Milky Way belongs to the spiral, the most widespread type of star clusters. The structure of our galaxy and the great secrets of the universe are now becoming more accessible to the human eye thanks to modern telescopes and space unmanned vehicles that regularly transmit to Earth the collected data.

So, we have already learned that the distribution of stars has one characteristic and pronounced feature, which is that their concentration as they approach the galactic center increases significantly. This allowed scientists to conclude that there is a supermassive body in the center that has unimaginably powerful gravity.

The center of our galaxy, located in the constellation of Sagittarius, seems to be occupied by a monstrous black hole. In any case, this is the only reasonable explanation that modern science can give to such a distribution of stars. In the future, our galaxy is waiting for a powerful cosmic cataclysm - a collision with the Andromeda galaxy, towards which we are speedily rushing. As a result of this catastrophe, Andromeda, much larger than the Milky Way, will swallow up our starry abode, which will cease to exist, but instead a new galaxy will form. And the evolution of the universe will continue ...