The Milky Way: Our Home Galaxy

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy spanning about 100,000 light-years across.
It contains an estimated 100–400 billion stars, including our Sun.
Our Solar System orbits the galaxy once every ~225 million years.
At its heart lies Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole about 4 million times the Sun’s mass.
The galaxy’s spiral arms are rich in gas, dust, and star-forming regions.
The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, alongside Andromeda and dozens of dwarf galaxies.
From Earth, we see it as a glowing band of stars across the night sky.
The Milky Way and Andromeda are slowly moving toward each other and will merge in ~4.5 billion years.
Dark matter makes up most of the Milky Way’s mass, shaping its rotation and structure.
Our galaxy is just one of billions in the universe—but it’s the one we call home.