The Milky Way

Key words
Components of the Milky Way
black hole Local Arm
1 A dense bulging center with a high concentration of stars.
galactic center Milky Way 2 A surrounding halo of stars.
galactic plane spiral galaxy 3 Trailing arms with less concentration of stars.
galaxy supermassive 4 Our Sun, about 30,000 ly from the center.
globular cluster black hole

The Milky Way 2,000 light

● The Milky Way is visible years
as an irregular band of
faint light across the night
sky.
● This band is the arm of
our galaxy in which the
Sun is located.
● Astronomers refer to our 1 2
galaxy as a whole as the 100,000 light years
Milky Way.

Our galaxy
● Our galaxy is a spiral
galaxy with four major
arms.
● It is thought to be
unusually large. 3
● It contains about 100
billion stars.
● The central bulge is
densely populated with
old red stars.
● The arms are mostly
populated by young blue
stars.
● A spherical halo of old
dull stars surrounds the
main disc.
● Clusters of old stars
(between 10,000 and a
million) known as
globular clusters also
surround the main disc.
● Some astronomers believe
there may be a
supermassive black hole
at the galactic center.

The Sun’s place 4

● The Sun is situated in one
© Diagram Visual Information Ltd.

of the Milky Way’s spiral

arms known as the Orion
or Local Arm.
● It is about 28,000 light
years from the galactic
center and about 20 light years above
the center of the galactic plane.