The Milky Way

The Milky Way is a vast, barred spiral galaxy that contains our solar system along with billions of other stars and planetary systems. Its structure features a central bulge, spiral arms extending outward, and a disk of gas, dust, and stars. The galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across and rotates, with our solar system orbiting the center at roughly 828,000 km/h. While it appears as a milky band in the night sky, the galaxy is a dynamic, gravitationally bound system, providing the cosmic environment where stars and planets form and evolve over billions of years.