The Milky Way - Our Galactic Home — Passage and Quiz

The Milky Way is our home galaxy, a vast collection of stars, planets, gas, and dust. It's so big that it's hard to imagine - scientists think it contains between 100 and 400 billion stars! Our Sun is just one of these many stars, located in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms.

If you look up at the night sky from a dark place, you might see a faint, milky band stretching across the sky. This is how our galaxy got its name - it looks like a trail of spilled milk. But what you're really seeing is the light from millions of stars that are too far away to see individually.

The Milky Way is shaped like a giant spiral, with a bulge in the center and long arms spiraling outward. These arms are where most of the stars, including our Sun, are found. At the very center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole, which is like a giant cosmic vacuum cleaner.

Our galaxy is always moving. It takes about 225 million years for our Sun to make one complete trip around the Milky Way. That's a long time! The last time our Sun was in this same spot, dinosaurs were just beginning to appear on Earth.

Scientists are still learning new things about our galaxy. They use powerful telescopes and spacecraft to study its structure, composition, and history. By understanding our own galaxy better, we can learn more about the universe and our place in it.