Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains Earth and the solar system. It is a spiral galaxy with a disk of stars spanning more than 100,000 light-years. Earth lies along one of its spiral arms, about halfway from the center, and the solar system takes about 240 million years to make one orbit around the galaxy.

From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a faint, milky band of light arcing across the sky. This is the central disk of our home galaxy seen edge on. The Milky Way belongs to the Local Group, a neighborhood of more than 50 galaxies that includes dwarf galaxies and Andromeda, its nearest large galactic neighbor.