The Milky Way

The Milky Way

The Milky ways is the name given to the Faint Band of Light that stretches across the night sky.

This light comes from stars and nebulae in our galaxy, known as the Milky way Galaxy or simply as " the Galaxy".

The Galaxy is shaped like a spiral, with a dense central bulge that is encircled by four arms spiralling outwards and surrounded by a less dense halo. We cannot see the spiral shape because the Solar System is in one of the spiral arms, the Orion Arm (also called the Local Arm).

From our position, the centre of the Galaxy is completely obscured by dust clouds; as a result, optical maps give only a limited view of the Galaxy. However, a more complete picture can be obtained by studying radio, infra-red, and other radiation.

The Central bulge of the Galaxy is a relatively small, dense sphere that contains mainly older red and yellow stars. The halo is a less dense region in which the oldest stars are situated; some of these stars may be old as the Galaxy itself (possibly 15 billion years). The spiral arms contain mainly hot, young, blue stars, as well as nebulae (clouds of dust and gas inside which stars are born).

The Galaxy is vast, about 100,000 light years across ( a light year is about 9,460 billion kilometres); in comparison, the solar system seems small, at about 12 light hours across (about 13 billion kilometres).

The entire Galaxy is rotating in space, although the inner stars travel faster than those further out.

The Sun, which is about two-thirds out from the centre, completes one lap of the Galaxy about every 220 million years.