• Key Information

  • Milky Way

  • Type
    Galaxy (barred spiral)
  • Diameter
    100,000 light years
  • Total Stars
    About 100 to 400 billion
  • Date of Discovery
    Unknown
  • Learning Point
  • The Milky Way is the name given to the galaxy that is the home of our Earth. It is home to hundreds of billions of stars, and is one of the biggest galaxies in our local area.
  • Project
  • Draw our Milky Way galaxy.
  • Location
  • Located in
    Around Us
  • Fun Facts
  • Though we can't see our galaxy from the outside, it is likely to be a barred spiral galaxy, similar to the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • Our galaxy has a slight bend in the disk caused by disturbance from other smaller dwarf galaxies.
  • We can see the Milky Way across the disk when we view it in the night sky. It looks like a cloudy collection of light spanning a large part of what we can see.
  • Edmund Hubble helped prove that our Galaxy was one of many billions of galaxies during the Great Debate of the 1920s.