Milky Way

The name of our galaxy. Also the name given to the band of diffuse light seen in the night sky that originates in the disk of our galaxy.


Figure: The shape and structures of the Milky Way Galaxy. The disk extends for about 15 kiloparsecs in radius, and the Sun is about 8 kpc from the center. The globular clusters orbit in the halo around the center. Harlow Shapley used the distribution of globular clusters to determine the location of the center of the Galaxy.