The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy containing 200-400 billion stars, including our solar system on the Orion Arm. It rotates around a central bar and is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which includes the Andromeda galaxy.
The Milky Way is a cluster of stars bound together by gravity in a spiral shape. This type of arrangement of stars is known as a galaxy. Many people are familiar with the concept of the Milky Way, as it houses our solar system on one of its spiral arms. In particularly clear conditions, the Milky Way is visible as a faint band of light in the sky. The stars in this band of light stretch across hundreds of thousands of light-years to collectively form our galaxy, which is only one of billions in the universe.
The name was taken directly from the Latin via lactea, which means “Milky Way”. It is probably a reference to the appearance of the galaxy in the night sky, as it looks rather like a large puddle of spilled milk. The fact that our galaxy was an interconnected system of stars was speculated as early as 1750, when observers realized that the white patch in the sky was actually made up of millions of stars.
Astronomers who have studied the origins of our galaxy have determined that it is nearly as old as the universe. The galaxy has six spiral arms emerging from a clear center marked by a bar of stars. The combination of spirals and a bar has led to the classification of the Milky Way as a barred spiral galaxy. It is estimated that our galaxy contains between 200 and 400 billion stars.
Seen from the side, the Milky Way has a large central bulge surrounded by a disk of stars and dust. Seen from above, the arrangement of the spirals around a central bar is clearly noticeable. Our solar system sits on the Orion Arm, one of the shortest arms of the Milky Way. The entire galaxy is surrounded by a halo of small star clusters and dust, which would make the galaxy appear cloudy to outside observers.
The entire galaxy slowly rotates around the central bar. Given the size of the galaxy, this rotation is so gradual that casual observers do not notice it. The sun takes between 200 and 230 million years to complete one orbit of the galaxy. The next closest galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy, another spiral galaxy that is sometimes referred to as our “sister galaxy.” Both galaxies are in the Virgo Supercluster, a large group of galaxies that includes the “local group,” an assortment of galaxies that includes the Milky Way.
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