Free Republic 2nd Qtr 2024 Fundraising Target: $81,000 Receipts & Pledges to-date: $35,139
43%  
Woo hoo!! And we're now over 43%!! Thank you all very much!! God bless.

Keyword: parallax

Brevity: Headers | « Text »
  • Our Place in the Galactic Neighborhood Just Got an Upgrade

    06/03/2013 5:36:13 PM PDT · by BenLurkin · 31 replies
    universetoday.com ^ | June 3, 2013 | Elizabeth Howell on
    If you imagine the Milky Way as a rippled cookie, our star is in a neighborhood in between two big ripples (the Sagittarius Arm and the Perseus Arm). Before, we thought the Local Arm (or Orion Arm) was just a small spur between the arms. New research using trigonometric parallax measurements, however, suggests the Local Arm could be a “significant branch” of one of those two arms. In a few words, our stellar neighborhood is a bigger and brighter one than we thought it was.