Q&A: General Astronomy and Space Science
Q:
At what distance, position and angle are we from the galactic plane?
A:
We're actually sitting in the galactic plane, orbiting at a
radius of about 8 kiloparsecs, or 26 light years from the center of the
galaxy.
For a nice drawing of the Milky Way galaxy and our position in it, see
this website:
http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/CGPS/where/plan/
And we have some additional illustrations at
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/milkyWay.html
The Chandra web pages have a helpful discussion of galactic coordinates:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/navigation.html
and beautiful images of the galactic center, in X-ray and other
wavelengths:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/gcenter/more.html
An overview of the Chandra mission and goals, Chandra's namesake, top 10 facts.
Classroom activities, printable materials, interactive games & more.
Overview of X-ray Astronomy and X-ray sources: black holes to galaxy clusters.
All Chandra images released to the public listed by date & by category
Current Chandra press releases, status reports, interviews & biographies.
A collection of multimedia, illustrations & animations, a glossary, FAQ & more.
A collection of illustrations, animations and video.
Chandra discoveries in an audio/video format.
