The Milky Way

 The Milky Way

 The Milky way is our home galaxy.   Galaxy forms part of group of about 24 galaxies travelling through space together. On a grander scale, this group forms part of bigger cluster of 1000s of galaxies . And on the biggest scale (atleast, as far as we know now), many such clusters make up the universe. A peculiar feature of this galaxy is a bright band of light that runs almost in a perfect Circle through it. As seen from the Earth this band looks like a river of light flowing through the sky. Actually it is made up of millions of scintillating starts which seen from far away, seems to be placed in close proximity to one another. This river of light is known as the Akash Ganga or Milky Way-the term is now applied to the galaxy as a whole. 

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. The main body is a disc 100,000 light years across with a globular nucleus of about 16,000 light years in diameter (thick at its centre) and far -stretching spiral arms (in one of which our solar system is located) . The Milky Way consists of hundreds of billions of stars rotating about its center in a stately average period of some 230 millions years. 

Our galactic nucleus is About  32,000 light years from the Sun . It appears to be a rotating disc of gas . In this rotating disc massive activities are going on . Here ,new starts are being born continually . The area is already crowded with full grown starts.