Milky Way

The Milky Way Galaxy (a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn derived from the Greek Γαλαξίας (Galaxias) sometimes referred to simply as "the Galaxy"), is a large barred spiral galaxy that is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, and contains over 400 billion stars. The galaxy is composed of three major parts: the center, which possibly contains a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, the spiral arms, which is the spiral of stars and interstellar dust that gives the galaxy its spiral shape, and the halo, which includes many older stars orbiting the core, but outside the disc, of which most are concentrated in massive globular clusters.

Appendices

External link

• Wikipedia Milky Way