Galaxy a23: The Milky Way or Milky

The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy [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 in other arms of the galaxy , which are so far away that they cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. 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 ... A galaxy can contain hundreds of billions of stars and be many thousands of light-years across. Our own galaxy , the Milky Way, is around 100,000 light-years in diameter. The Basics: What Is a Galaxy , Really? At its core, a galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter. Galaxies are sprawling systems of dust, gas, dark matter, and anywhere from a million to a trillion stars that are held together by gravity. Nearly all large galaxies are thought to also...