The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy around 13.6 billion years old with large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos.
Our home galaxy’s disk is about 100,000 light-years in diameter and just 1000 light-years thick, according to Las Cumbres Observatory.
Just as Earth orbits the sun, the solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way. Despite hurtling through space at speeds of around 515,000mph (828,000kmph) our solar system takes approximately 250 million years to complete a single revolution, according to Interesting Engineering. The last time our planet was in this position, dinosaurs were just emerging and mammals were yet to evolve.
If the center of the Milky Way were a city, we would be living in suburbia, about 25,000 to 30,000 light-years from the city center. Life in the outskirts is good; we find ourselves nestled in one of the smaller neighborhoods, the Orion-Cygnus Arm, sandwiched between larger Perseus and Carina-Sagittarius arms. If we were to travel inwards towards the city center, we would find the Scutum-Centaurus and Norma arms.
On a clear night, void of light pollution, we can catch a glimpse of the bright lights of the galactic city streaking across the night sky. Our window into the universe, this milky white band of stars, dust and gas is where our galaxy gets its name.
Lying at the very heart of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. About 4 million times the mass of the sun, this beast consumes anything that strays too close, gorging on an ample supply of stellar material enabling it to grow into a giant. In 2022, we imaged this glutton at the core of our galaxy for the very first time, through an innovative technique allowing us to view the shadow of the black hole.
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