The Milkyway - beyond our imagination

The Milkyway

The Sun is orbited by the earth and other planets. Commonly known as the Solar System. A collection of other solar systems is called a galaxy, including our own solar system. Milky-way is the galaxy which hosts our solar system. There are around 30 galaxies near the Milky-Way. The nearest galaxy is Andromeda.

Scientists have estimated that there might be about 100 billion stars in the Milky-Way. The distance between one end and the other end of the Milky-Way is approximately 1lakhlightyears.

What's at the middle of the Milky-Way?

The centre (the two 'egg yolks') is called the nuclear bulge. There's probably a monster black hole there, more than a million times bigger than Sun. Scientists call the black hole" Sagittarius A* "

Milky way hosts 17 billion earth- sized planets?

Astronomers using NASA's Kepler spacecraft have discovered that one in six stars hosts an earth-sized planets in a close orbit, suggesting there are at least 17 billion such planets in our galaxy.

A new analysis of Kepler data showed that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth - sized planets in an orbit closer than mercury.

Since the Milkyway has about 100billion stars, there are at least 17 billion earth-sized worlds out there.