Our home galaxy the Milky Way with enough stars to give
50 to every person on Earth. The Sun, our star, is but one.
This is a computer-generated image of the Milky Way galaxy based on
real data describing its spiral structure, brightest star forming regions,
and clusters of old stars called globular clusters.
We live about 2/3 of the way out from the galactic center in a wisp
of material called the Orion Spur, between the Perseus and Sagittarius
spiral arms. To get a sense of scale, the Sun is 93,000,000 miles (150,000,000
km) away from Earth. The Earth-Sun distance is a pretty large ruler.
You would have to lay 6 billion of these rulers end to end to cross
the Milky Way galaxy. That’s one Earth-Sun ruler for every human
being.
Continue the Voyage: Explore other galaxies beyond our own
courtesy of the Hubble
Space Telescope.
