Great Rift
ObjectNebulae
Dark nebula band obscuring much of the Milky Way
1.25Uncommon
Uncommon
Great Rift
- Nebulae
The Great Rift, also called the Dark Rift or Dark River, is a dark band in the night sky caused by interstellar clouds of cosmic dust. From Earth, these clouds obscure the center and much of the Milky Way at visible wavelengths. The rift lies largely between the Solar System and the inward Sagittarius Arm. Its clouds span about 800 to 1,000 parsecs from Earth and are estimated to contain about 1 million solar masses of plasma and dust.
- Type
- Dark nebula
- Location
- Largely between the Solar System and Sagittarius Arm
- Cloud extent
- About 800 to 1,000 parsecs from Earth
Sources and credits
Sources and credits
- Article
- Great Rift (astronomy) (English Wikipedia)
- Wikidata
- Q1085203
- Text
- Card text is adapted from the English Wikipedia article by an automated summary. Wikipedia content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for its contributors. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Article history and contributors
- Illustration
- By NASA. Public domain · File page on Wikimedia CommonsNASA, http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-alignment.htmlModifications: Resized and converted to WebP
- Popularity
- 69 median daily views (Wikimedia Pageviews API (all-access, user agent))
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