On a clear night the Milky Way is a pale river of light from horizon to horizon: our own galaxy, seen from within. These three enhanced frames, made a few minutes apart on the evening of 29 September 2026, follow that band of unresolved stars, dark dust, and faint nebulae.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral. The Sun rides the inner edge of the Orion Arm, about 27,000 light-years from the Galactic Center in Sagittarius. The starry disk stretches roughly 100,000 light-years from edge to edge and is only about 1,000 light-years thick, so the galaxy appears as a narrow path across the sky. In that path lies the combined light of an estimated 100–400 billion stars.
Facts
- Barred spiral galaxy, seen from inside the disk
- About 27,000 light-years from the Sun to the Galactic Center
- Roughly 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick
- An estimated 100–400 billion stars
- Center in Sagittarius, anchored by the black hole Sagittarius A*
- About 13.6 billion years old
