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The Milky Way
SBc · Barred Spiral Galaxy
Our home galaxy — a vast spiral of some 200 billion stars, wound in arms of gas, dust, and light, with our Sun a single ember drifting in one of its outer arms, orbiting the galactic core once every 230 million years.
~100,000 light-years across
SBc · Barred Spiral Galaxy
Did You Know
- ◆The Milky Way contains between 100–400 billion stars.
- ◆It is on a collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy, due to merge in about 4.5 billion years.
- ◆The hazy band visible from Earth on dark nights is the galaxy's own disk, seen edge-on from within.