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Health & Fitness

Dark

Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark tonight turning to partly light in the morning.  ~George Carlin  ............

I have posted this shot before but have brought it out since the Friends of Negwegon State Park have asked to use it to further their application with the State of Michigan to have the Park designated as a Dark Sky Preserve!  Behold the Milky Way in Alcona County! ....... Five quick fun facts about the Milky Way:.....................

Milky Way Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy. It has a diameter if about 100,000 light years with more than 100 billion stars................................................................
 
A huge supermassive black hole lies in the core of our galaxy...................................................................
 
Milky Way Galaxy is the second largest galaxy in our group called the "Local Group". Our galaxy is heading towards the largest galaxy in our group, which is the Andromeda Galaxy. This means that we are on a collison course at a speed of about 100 m/s. .............................

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The oldest star in our galaxy is about 13.2 billion years old, which is called HE 1523. It is just younger than our Universe which is 13.7 billion years old. Just to show how old the star is, our Solar System is only 4.6 billion years old. .........................................................................

Our Sun orbits the Milky Way Galaxy at a speed of 4800 m/s and even at that speed, Our Sun has orbited our Galaxy only 20 times. It takes about 225 - 250 million years for our Sun to orbit the Milky Way Galaxy. This is known as the Galactic Year.
(courtesy of universeforfacts.com)

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