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How big is the Milky Way?

The Milky Way is 1.2 zettameters

The Enormous Expanse of the Milky Way

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered about the hazy band of light that stretches across it? That’s the Milky Way, our home galaxy! It may seem small from our perspective, but it’s a massive, sprawling entity that makes our solar system look like a speck of dust. Let’s take a closer look at just how big the Milky Way really is.

A Galaxy of Epic Proportions

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! 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. So, if you multiply that by 100,000, you’d get the distance across our Milky Way galaxy. That’s a number so large it’s hard to even imagine!

Size Comparison of the Milky Way

  • The Milky Way compared to the Earth: If the Milky Way was shrunk down to the size of the United States, the Earth would be smaller than a grain of sand.
  • The Milky Way compared to the Solar System: Even our entire solar system, from the Sun to the furthest planet Neptune, is incredibly tiny compared to the Milky Way. If the Milky Way was the size of a football field, our solar system would be the size of a dime!
  • The Milky Way compared to other galaxies: While the Milky Way is massive, it’s actually only average-sized compared to other galaxies in the universe. The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor, is twice as large. There are even some galaxies out there that are more than 30 times larger than the Milky Way!

Milky Way: A Swirling Spiral Galaxy

The Milky Way isn’t just vast; it’s also beautifully structured. It has a flat, disk-like shape filled with billions of stars, which create spiral arms that wrap around the center. Imagine an enormous spinning record, but instead of grooves, it has sparkling stars! The Milky Way is also always in motion. It’s rotating, with stars moving at different speeds depending on their distance from the center. The Sun and the Earth, for instance, are about 26,000 light-years away from the Milky Way’s center and are orbiting around it at a speed of 514,000 miles per hour.

The Milky Way: A Galaxy Full of Mysteries

The Milky Way is not just a big, beautiful galaxy; it’s also full of mysteries waiting to be solved. For example, while we know it’s a spiral galaxy, we’re not sure how many spiral arms it has because we’re inside it and can’t see its full structure. Also, at the very center of the Milky Way, there’s a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* that’s about 4.1 million times as massive as the Sun! In conclusion, the Milky Way is a massive, beautiful, and mysterious galaxy that’s home to billions of stars, including our own Sun. It’s so large that it’s hard to grasp its true size, but one thing is for sure: when we gaze up at the night sky, we’re only seeing a tiny fraction of this incredible cosmic entity. So next time you look up at the stars, remember that you’re part of something much larger and even more amazing!

Smaller By Category
Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy
The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is the nearest galaxy, if you don't count the Milky Way itself. It lies between the arms of the Milky Way and is being pulled apart by the gravity of the Milky Way.
Whirlpool Galaxy
The spiral arms in the Whirlpool Galaxy were believed to have been formed from a collision of a nearby galaxy. Wouldn't it be odd if you grew new arms whenever you collided into something?
Triangulum Galaxy
This galaxy is not shaped like a triangle; it's just called that because it is found in the constellation Triangulum. Did you realize that any three stars form a "triangle constellation"? You could have millions of triangle constellations!
Larger By Category
Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy is the Milky Way's twin. It's the nearest galaxy that is a similar size and shape. In a few billion years, the two galaxies will collide and form one larger elliptical galaxy - Milkomeda.
Pinwheel Galaxy
When this galaxy was first discovered, it was believed to be a nebula. It's not; it's a galaxy. It's also called Messier 101, because it was the 101st Messier object to be cataloged.
NGC 1232
NGC 1232 is a pretty big galaxy. It's bigger than ours, but it's not the biggest. Of course, IC 1101 is not the biggest galaxy, it's only the biggest galaxy we know of. There are probably many more!