What is the Milky Way?

We all know how infinitely vast the universe is…with countless number of stars, galaxies upon galaxies and the different planets. If you sometimes ponder over this for long, you almost realize that you presence is almost non- existent in such huge vastness.

Well, one such example of nature’s magnificent largeness is the Milky Way galaxy! Have you ever looked at the sky in the night and seen a dim strip of milky colour? If yes, then that’s the Milky Way, also called as ‘Akash Ganga’. The solar system also belongs to this galaxy and is situated at the thin edge.

Scientists have observed through the telescope that the Milky Way contains innumerable stars, dust and gases and at its centre, is a black hole called Sagittarius A* whose mass is four million times that of the sun. I’m sure you must be gasping at this fact but then nature and its creations never fail to surprise us, right? 😛 Also, Its milky colour is due to presence of clusters of stars which make it up. And when we’re looking at the sky thinking we’re seeing the stars, we are in fact looking at the centre of Milky Way. It has about 150 trillion stars and studies have revealed that it is spiral in shape.

Now, you must be wondering that if the entire solar system is present in this galaxy, how exponentially large is this galaxy? The size of this galaxy is so large, that it cannot be measured in terms of kilometers only. Therefore, there is a separate unit for measuring large distances called the Light Year, which is the distance travelled by light in a year. So, the distance of milky way is one hundred thousand light years. The sun is located at a distance of 30 thousand light years from the centre of the galaxy and takes 225 million years to complete one revolution.

It is just mind boggling to know facts related to nature and its wonders. Especially when it comes to celestial bodies, their magnum sizes, compositions etc, one can only sit back and wonder, that how great is the world! Isn’t it?  😀

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