Is the Sun only one of the hundreds of billions of stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy, a vast cosmic sphere? The Milky Way is a massive cluster of stars, dust, and gas that stretches across the sky. It’s termed a spiral galaxy because it appears to spin like a pinwheel when viewed from the top or bottom. The Sun is around 25,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center, on one of the spiral arms. Even if you could travel faster than light (300,000 kilometers per second, or 186,000 miles per second), it would take you 25,000 years to reach the Milky Way’s center.
What is the Milky Way, exactly?
The Milky Way is a galaxy consisting of a gently revolving cluster of almost 200 billion stars! It’s one of the numerous galaxies that make up our universe.
What exactly is a galaxy?
Galaxies are massive clumps of stars, gas, and dust that make up the universe. They could have millions to billions of stars, all of which are held together by gravitational attraction. The majority of galaxies are flat, but they come in various shapes, including spirals, elliptical galaxies, and irregular galaxies.
Are all galaxies the same as our own Milky Way?
No. Galaxies exist in a variety of sizes. Millions of stars can be found in smaller ones, while billions can be found in larger ones. Galaxies come in a variety of forms. Some, like the Milky Way, are spiral galaxies. Some are irregular galaxies, while others are egg-shaped elliptical galaxies.
The Milky Way galaxy’s shape
The Milky Way is visible above in the night sky from dark regions on Earth at certain times of the year (you can’t see it from under strong city lights).
We’re on an outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, and what we see in the sky is our view toward the galaxy’s center. If you could fly into space and gaze down on our galaxy, you’d see a vast spiral that looked like a pinwheel.
The Milky Way was initially assumed to be a spiral galaxy, similar to the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. However, there is a lot of debate nowadays about the Milky Way’s exact shape. Although it is a spiral galaxy, the exact shape is still unknown. The Milky Way appears to be a barred spiral with minor armlike features and fragmented spurs.
In which section of the Milky Way do we find ourselves?
We’re in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, roughly 25,000 light-years from the galaxy’s core — or nearly halfway there.
Are you able to view the Milky Way?
Yes! A faint, hazy — or milky — band might be seen in the sky on a very dark night, away from bright lights. The brightest star in the sky is the Milky Way. Because there are so many far-away stars, your eye cannot differentiate them as independent points of light, resulting in a fuzzy appearance. Individual stars can be seen using binoculars or a telescope.
The Milky Way From Space
This image of our galaxy’s spiral arms and dust clouds was captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. From our view on Earth, we see The Milky Way as a bright band of stars that rise in summer and fade into obscurity in winter, but from space it takes on new personality. This photograph is made up of 3.4-micron data from Spitzer, 7-micron data from Hubble and 8-micron data from GALEX. It took 1.5 million seconds (29.7 days) worth of observations to create! It has been colorized with blue representing 3.4 microns, green for 7 microns and red for 8 microns. The red shows hot gas and dust while green represents cold material such as dense molecular clouds or dusty lanes of star formation where future generations of stars will form like beads on a string.
