Possibilities

[saturnisntjustacar]

I am a newcomer to this website, and all of the subject matter, too. I have a few questions about it all: <br />1) what is the milky way and what is in it?<br />2) what is the closest star, and what is the farthest? and what are the numbers involved?<br />3) what is all the hub-bub about Sedna?<br /><br />Thank you for being understanding of my lack of knowledge on these topics. Please do know that i am very interested in all of it and i take it quite serioussly and im not just joking around.

 

[pluto_is_not_a_dog]

well saturn, sedna is possibly the 10th planet and the first visible object in the oort cloud. hope this helps!

 

[lunatio_gordin]

1. The milky way is the name of the Galaxy that the Earth and the rest of the Solar System are in. Every individual star you can see at night is also in the Milky Way.<br />2. The nearest star is actually a system of Three stars, called Alpha Centauri, or Rigel Kentaurus. the pair are fairly close together are both relatively like our own sun. the Third is Proxima Centauri, and it's a small red dwarf star. They're about 4 and a half lightyears away.<br />3.EDIT: see this http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/<br />I'm sure there are others who can give better answers. but this is some basic stuff.

 

[saturnisntjustacar]

Thank you for responding, and yes, it did help.

 

[saturnisntjustacar]

thank you so much Lunatio! I appreciate it very much. Feel free to send me a private message with any new or interesting facts!

 

[nexium]

The farthest star in our galaxy likely is too dim to detect. I'd guess about 80,000 lightyears. Near the outermost edge of our galaxy are mostly dim stars with 8 to10% of the mass of our sun, so galaxys do not have a distint edge. Neil