Our place in the Milky Way

Diameter of Milky Way: 90,000 light years

Number of stars in the Milky Way: approx 1 trillion


A little about these pictures. The top picture is of spiral galaxy M74 which is thought to look very much like our Milky Way. Our solar system is in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way approximately in the position shown in these pictures. Photo source was M74 at seds.org.

The picture below is an actual composite of the Milky Way galaxy.