Milky Way - Wikipedia
The Milky Way [c] 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 distinguished by the naked eye.
Milky Way and Our Location - NASA
Feb 1, 2012 · The Milky Way Galaxy is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur. Overlaid is a graphic of galactic longitude in relation to our Sun. Credit: NASA/Adler/U. Chicago/Wesleyan/JPL-Caltech
Milky Way galaxy: Facts about our cosmic neighborhood | Space
Apr 18, 2023 · The Milky Way galaxy is our cosmic home. A barred spiral galaxy stretching 100,000 light-years across. Here we explore our galactic neighborhood in more detail.
Solar System, Galaxy, Universe: What’s the Difference? - Science@NASA
Jun 1, 2017 · Our Solar System consists of our star, the Sun, and its orbiting planets (including Earth), along with numerous moons, asteroids, comet material, rocks, and dust. Our Sun is just one star among the hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
The Milky Way Galaxy - NASA Science
Nov 8, 2017 · Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Previously, our galaxy was thought to …
Milky Way Galaxy | Size, Definition, & Facts | Britannica
2 days ago · 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 Galaxy - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for …
The 1.2 Meter Millimeter-Wave Telescope (MWT) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is dedicated to mapping the locations of these clouds in the Milky Way, which reveals details about the structure of our home galaxy and its star-forming capabilities.
The Milky Way Galaxy - Imagine the Universe!
Jan 9, 2025 · Our solar system is 26,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy. All objects in the Galaxy revolve around the Galaxy's center. It takes 250 million years for our Sun (and the Earth with it) to make one revolution around the center of the Milky Way.
In Depth | Our Solar System - NASA Solar System Exploration
The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and ...
The Milky Way Galaxy - timeanddate.com
Our planet is part of a solar system that rotates in one of the smaller galactic branches known as the Local Arm. Earth’s Sun is roughly two-thirds of the way out from what is probably a black hole at the core of the Milky Way, at a distance of about 26,000 light years from the galactic center.