• Question: How far is the milkyway away from us?

    Asked by anawesomepersonlol to Sam on 14 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 14 Jun 2013:

      You’re in the Milky Way right now! If you live in the deep countryside, or go there on holiday, you look up and see something like this:

      That’s the Milky Way! It’s a disk shape that you see on its edge. It’s made of a hundred million stars or so, and is a trillion times more massive than our Sun. The centre of the Milky Way galaxy is (checks internet…) 27 thousand light years away. In the centre is a huge black hole, which can’t see (black holes suck in all the light that passes them) but we know is there because stars appear to be orbiting around nothing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7xl_zjz0o8 (this is from an actual telescope).

      So there’s your answer: no distance at all!

      Oh also, your profile says that your favourite thing about science is writing things down – we should totally team up, because I hate writing papers! I kinda lose steam and just want to get onto new exciting things. But communicating what you do is really important, so it’s great that you like doing that.

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