Milky way
The Milky Way is our galaxy, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter, containing an estimated 100–400 billion stars, along with gas, dust, and dark matter. It’s called a barred spiral because it has a central bar-shaped structure with spiral arms extending outward. Our Solar System is located in one of these arms, the Orion Arm, about 27,000 light-years from the galactic center.At the core of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, with a mass about 4 million times that of the Sun. The galaxy is surrounded by a halo of gas, stars, and globular clusters, and it’s part of the Local Group, a collection of galaxies including Andromeda and the Triangulum Galaxy.We see the Milky Way as a bright band across the night sky because we’re inside it, looking through its disk. Its name comes from its milky appearance, a result of countless stars and cosmic material. It’s been studied through telescopes, radio waves, and infrared to understand its s...