Our little solar system, revolving around our Sun, twirls around inside an arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
The galaxy itself is twirling and moving through space, and our solar system oscillates up and down within this moving arm. It can be a very bumpy ride at times
See if you can spot the position of our sun in this, the latest graphic of our galaxy:
Milky Way loses two arms - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24951910...oses-two-arms/
The hubble telescope has proved space is not half as empty as we thought it was, and our Milky Way has 'neighbors' too.
The nearest galaxy to the milky way, discovered in 2003, is the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. It is so close that the Milky Way is gradually consuming it by pulling in its stars. But it will be few billion years before it is entirely swallowed up. The previous record holder was the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, which was discovered in 1994.
When I was a kid in school they taught me the Andromeda galaxy was our nearest neighbor. Andromeda is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224:
Andromeda is drifting through space too, and eventually the milky way and andromeda are going to collide. 'Merge' might be a better term, hubble has proved the merging of galaxies is a slow, graceful affair, as long as one is far enough away from the action to observe:
Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Merging http://www.wolaver.org/Space/galaxymerger.htm
The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy are approaching each other with a speed of about 130 km/s, or 290 miles per hour. The collision of these two galaxies will not occur for about 5 billion years
Heres a hubble shot of some other merging galaxies.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spaceart-02e.html
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