The Milky Way is a galaxy. It has a vast collection of stars, planets and other heavenly bodies. It is made up of at least a 100 billion stars, as well as dust and gas. It is spiral in shape. Our solar system is a tiny part of this huge galaxy. Ancient people named it so because they observed that the night sky upon gazing looks like a trail of spilled milk. The size of the Milky Way was first measured by Harlow Shapley in 1917, an American astronomer. He calculated that the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years, distance travelled by light in one year, which is about 9,460,000,000,000 km. Our solar system lies about 32,000 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way.
What is the Milky Way?
