The Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that we live in.

It has at least 200,000,000,000 (200 billion or 2 x 10¹¹) stars in it.

The Milky Way has a radius of around 50,000 light-years and
the Sun is about two-thirds of the way out from the centre.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.

Because we live within it, we cannot see the whole shape of the galaxy. All we see is a big "band" of stars across the sky when we look towards the centre (see the picture to the right)

On a clear night you can see some of this "band" in the sky. It looks a bit like a splash of milk across the black sky, which gives the galaxy its name.