The Milky Way

The Milky Way is our home galaxy. A spiral galaxy that is home to more than 200 billion stars, and is about 100,000 light-years across (making it one of the largest galaxies in the Local Group supercluster).

The nucleus of the Milky Way is a black hole called Sagittarius* surround with old stars, crowned in a halo of even older stars. All of the younger stars of the Milky Way are locked in the spiral arms that emanate from the nucleus, where there is enough material remaining for new stars to be formed.

The Sun is a single star of the Milky Way, a young star located about 2/3 of the way out one of her spiral arms. (Found in what we call the Orion Arm of the galaxy.)

Every star that we see at night is part of the Milky Way. (With the exception of a couple of those bright objects, which are not stars at all, but entire galaxies outside our own.)

Appearance of the Milky Way

When viewed from the side, the Milky Way would look like an optical lense — the disc would appear as a flat line with a roughly spherical bulge near the center, made of old stars near the center and the most ancient stars in the galaxy in the diffuse halo around. Flattened edges with a bright central nucleus.

From above the galaxy has its typical spiral shape. A great flat disc, with spiral arms composed of stars and space clouds radiating from the bright central nucleus.

The arms contain the majority of our galaxies interstellar has and dust. As such, since this material is what stars are formed out of, these regions are often star-forming regions where new stars are born.

The Heart of the Milky Way

At the heart of the Milky Way is a black hole. From our perspective out on the Orion Arm, the nucleus of the Milky Way is located in the direction of the Sagittarius Constellation.

The Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy also extends from this region. The arm and the nucleus of the galaxy are relatively dense with gas and dust — active regions in our galaxy — so our view of most of the galaxy behind this region is largely occluded by this matter.