Illustrated · 1 min
Overview of the Milky Way
The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It's a collection of stars and dust 100,000 light-years across (a light-year is the distance a photon can travel in a year) and contains at least 100 billion stars. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, meaning it is shaped somewhat like a pinwheel with a thick stripe of stars across its center.
The sun is in the disk of the Milky Way, located in the Orion-Cygnus arm.
The Milky way is also surrounded by many small satellite galaxies, such as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
The two bluish cloudlike shapes are the Magellanic Clouds. They can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere.
