Astronomy: Spacemap from the Milky Way Galaxy

<< Zoom In | >> Zoom Out Our Sun and the planets belong to a galaxy called the Milky Way - a gigantic swirl of stars, gas and dust 10.000 billion km wide. Our Sun is one of between 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. The stars, planets, nebulae and clusters inside the Milky Way all slowly rotate around its bright centre. In the southern hemisphere (under the equator) and on dark, clear nights, you can sometimes see a bright band of stars across the sky. At that point you are looking in towards the centre of the Milky Way.