Question

What is the Milky Way?

Answer 1

The Milky Way is the Galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eyes. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that has a diameter usually considered to be about 100,000–120,000 light-years. It contains 100–400 billion stars, at least 100 billion planets.