Sun's location

The Sun (and therefore the Earth and Solar System) may be found close to the inner rim of the Galaxy's Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff or the Gould Belt, at a hypothesized distance of 7.62±0.32 kpc (~25,000±1,000 ly) from the Galactic Center. The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Peruses Arm, is about 6,500 light-years. The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in what scientists call the galactic habitable zone.

The Apex of the Sun's Way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit around the Galaxy is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to the galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition, the Sun oscillates up and down relative to the galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. This is very similar to how a simple harmonic oscillator works with no drag force (damping) term. These oscillations often coincide with mass extinction periods on Earth; presumably the higher density of stars close to the galactic plane leads to more impact events.

Elliptical

Elliptical galaxies are actually of ellipsoidal shape, and it is now quite safe from observation that they are usually triaxial (cosmic footballs, as Paul Murdin, David Allen, and David Malian put it). They have little or no global angular momentum, i.e. do not rotate as a whole (of course, the stars still orbit the centers of these galaxies, but the orbits are statistically oriented so that only little net orbital angular momentum sums up). Normally, elliptical galaxies contain very little or no interstellar matter, and consist of old population II stars only: They appear like luminous bulges of spirals, without a disk component.

However, for some elliptical, small disk components have been discovered, so that they may be representatives of one end of a common scheme of galaxy forms which includes the disk galaxies.

Spiral

Spiral galaxies usually consist of two major components: A flat, large disk which often contains a lot of interstellar matter (visible sometimes as reddish diffuse emission nebulae, or as dark dust clouds) and young (open) star clusters and associations, which have emerged from them (recognizable from the bluish light of their hottest, short-living, most massive stars), often arranged in conspicuous and striking spiral patterns and/or bar structures, and an ellipsoid ally formed bulge component, consisting of an old stellar population without interstellar matter, and often associated with globular clusters.

The young stars in the disk are classified as stellar population I, the old bulge stars as population II. The luminosity and mass relation of these components seem to vary in a wide range, giving rise to a classification scheme. The pattern structures in the disk are most probably transient phenomena only, caused by gravitational interaction with neighboring galaxies.

Melkweg

The Melkweg (English translation: "Milky Way") is a popular music venue and cultural center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is located on the Lijnbaansgracht, near the Leidseplein, a prime nightlife center of Amsterdam. It is housed in a former warehouse and is divided into a number of spaces of varying sizes. Besides a large hall for rock and pop music concerts, there are also spaces for dance/theater, cinema, photography and media-art. The Melkweg is run by a non-profit organization that has existed since 1970.

It is referenced in the Cracker song "Euro-Trash Girl", the Lag wagon song "Infectious" and in title of the Half Man Half Biscuit song "Prag Vec at the Melkweg". The title of The Church's song "Under the Milky Way" is also a reference to the Melkweg.

The website Fabchannel.com streams live and on demand concerts from the Melkweg.