Space field note
A hundred billion neighbors
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way
Our sun is just one of more than a hundred billion stars swirling together in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Let's look closer
How many stars can really fit in one galaxy?
he Milky Way is shaped like a huge, flattened pinwheel, with long, curving spiral arms made of stars, gas, and dust all slowly spinning around a crowded, bright center that scientists believe holds a supermassive black hole. Our whole solar system rides along inside one of those outer spiral arms, roughly two-thirds of the way out from the galaxy's crowded center. Even moving at incredible speed, our solar system takes about two hundred million years to complete just a single loop around the galaxy, meaning the last time we were in this exact spot, dinosaurs hadn't even appeared on Earth yet.
Look for this
Explorer clue
On a very dark night far from city lights, look for a hazy, pale band stretching across the sky; that soft glow is the crowded heart of our own galaxy.
Your turn to wonder
Curiosity question
If you could travel to just one of those hundred billion stars, what would you hope to find waiting there?
Keep wandering
