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Milky Way Galaxy (sometimes simply called the Galaxy), large spiral system of about several hundred billion stars, one of which is the Sun. It takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars and gas clouds that stretches across the sky as seen from Earth.
The Milky Way is our home galaxy, the spot where the Earth resides. We are not anywhere near the center — NASA says we’re roughly 165 quadrillion miles from the galaxy’s black hole, for ...
In March 2019, astronomers reported that the virial mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is 1.54 trillion solar masses within a radius of about 39.5 kpc (130,000 ly), over twice as much as was determined in earlier studies, suggesting that about 90% of the mass of the galaxy is dark matter.
Light zips along through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second (more than 66 trips across the entire United States, in one second). Multiply that by all the seconds in one year, and you get 5.8 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).
NASA explains the size of the Milky Way galaxy in terms of light-years and miles. Credit: NASA
The Milky Way is a galaxy, a colossal group of stars, dust, and gas that are all held together by gravity. But what’s more extraordinary is just how enormous it is. Our Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter!
Our Milky Way galaxy is one of billions in the universe. We do not know exactly how many galaxies exist: a modern estimate vastly increases previous counts to as many as 2 trillion.