The Milky Way Galaxy

One of the largest components of the Local Group of Galaxies is the Milky Way galaxy.
Beyond the Local Group is the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies — about 54
million light-years from Earth. The Milky Way contains almost everything in the sky that you
can see with the naked eye - from Earth and our solar system to the stars of the solar
neighborhood, the visible stars in the constellations, and all the stars that blend to make that
milky stream in the bright sky - and plenty of objects and matter that you can’t see. It also
contains nearly every nebula you can see without telescopic aid. Besides loose stars, the Milky
Way holds hundreds of star clusters such as the Pleiades and Hyades in the constellation
Taurus. The Milky Way has comprised approximately about 100 billion stars. These stars form
a large disk whose diameter is about 100,000 light-years. Our Solar System is about 25,000
light-years away from our galaxy's center – we live in our galaxy’s suburbs. Just as the Earth
orbits the Sun, the Sun goes around the Milky Way center. It takes 250 million years for our
Sun and the solar system to go around the Milky Way center. The solar system has orbited 20
to 25 times since it formed 4.6 billion years ago. Recently, astronomers have discovered a
supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and most other galaxies.

Figure 10. An all-sky image shows the flat plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Image retrieved from
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/milkyway1.html (Credit: E. L. Wright/UCLA, The COBE Project,
DIRBE, NASA)

Shape and Size

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy composed of billions of stars (the galactic disk, about 100,000
light-years in diameter and 3,000 light-years thick) that contains the spiral arms. The arms are
shaped roughly like water streams from a rotating lawn sprinkler and have many bright, young
blue and white stars and gas clouds. The center of our galaxy is called the galactic center.
Centered on the center is the galactic bulge. The galactic bulge is a roughly spherical
formation of millions of mostly orange and red stars.