- About 100,000 light-years acrossThe width of the Milky Way galaxy depends on how you measure it. If you only consider the luminous spiral disk, the galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across1. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which is about 9.5 x 10 12 km. However, if you include the faint halo of stars and gas that surrounds the disk, the galaxy could be as wide as 2 million light-years2.Learn more:✕This summary was generated using AI based on multiple online sources. To view the original source information, use the "Learn more" links.
NASA estimates the galaxy at 100,000 light-years across. Since one light year is about 9.5 x 10 12 km, so the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 9.5 x 10 17 km in diameter. The thickness of the galaxy ranges depending on how close you are to the center, but it’s tens of thousands of light-years across.
www.universetoday.com/75691/how-big-is-the-milk…New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk.www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-fo… - See more
See all on WikipediaMilky Way - Wikipedia
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a D 25 isophotal diameter estimated at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years), [10] but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge). See more
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually … See more
Sun's location and neighborhood
The Sun is near the inner rim of the Orion Arm, within the Local Fluff of the Local Bubble, between the Radcliffe wave and Split linear structures (formerly Gould Belt). Based upon studies of stellar orbits around Sgr A* by … See moreIn the Babylonian epic poem Enūma Eliš, the Milky Way is created from the severed tail of the primeval salt water dragoness Tiamat, set in the sky by Marduk, the Babylonian national god, after slaying her. This story was once thought to have been based on an older See more
Ancient, naked eye observations
In Meteorologica, Aristotle (384–322 BC) states that the Greek philosophers Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BC) and Democritus (460–370 BC) proposed that the Milky Way is the glow of stars not directly visible due … See moreSize
The Milky Way is one of the two largest galaxies in the Local Group (the other being the Andromeda Galaxy), although the size for its See moreWikipedia text under CC-BY-SA license Milky Way Galaxy | Size, Definition, & Facts | Britannica
- The Milky Way Galaxy takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars …
How big is the Milky Way Galaxy? - The first reliable measurement of the size of the Milky Way Galaxy was made in 1917 by Ameri…
Is Earth in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy?
- The Milky Way Galaxy takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars …
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Milky Way galaxy: Facts about our cosmic neighborhood | Space
How big is the Milky Way? | Scale of the Universe - Scale of Universe
Our Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter! To give you an idea of what that means, a light-year is the distance that light can travel in one year, which is roughly 5.88 trillion miles. …
How Big Is The Milky Way? - Universe Today
Jan 20, 2015 · NASA estimates the galaxy at 100,000 light-years across. Since one light year is about 9.5 x 10 12 km, so the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 9.5 x 10 17 km in diameter. The...
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Our Milky Way Galaxy: How Big is Space?
Apr 2, 2019 · Our galaxy probably contains 100 to 400 billion stars, and is about 100,000 light-years across. That sounds huge, and it is, at least until we start comparing it to other galaxies. Our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, for …
Where Are We In The Milky Way | Milky Way Facts
Feb 25, 2022 · The Milky Way is 105,700 light-years wide while the Andromeda Galaxy is 220,000 light-years in width. By the way, the Local Group — a group of multiple galaxies including the Milky Way — extends for roughly 10 million …
Milky Way - Simple English Wikipedia, the free …
The Milky Way has a diameter of 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years) as measured using the D 25 isophote, [17] [18] [19] and is a barred spiral galaxy. The idea that the Milky Way is made of stars goes back to the Ancient …
How Big Is The Milky Way? - WorldAtlas
Aug 1, 2022 · The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to be 100,000 to 200,000 light years across. The size of the Milky Way is determined using both parallax and variable stars.
The Size of the Milky Way - Universe Today
Jan 26, 2009 · Its thickness is 1,000 light years throughout most of the disk, but there is a spheroidal bulge at the center of the galaxy that is 12,000 light years in diameter. These proportions are...
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