This artist's concept illustrates the Large Magellanic Cloud's (LMC's) encounter with the Milky Way galaxy's gaseous halo. In the top panel, at the middle of the right side, the LMC begins crashing through our galaxy's much more massive halo. The bright purple bow shock represents the leading edge of the LMC's halo, which is being compressed as ...

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Milky Way Galaxy - Structure, Dynamics, Stars: The first reliable measurement of the size of the Galaxy was made in 1917 by American astronomer Harlow Shapley. He arrived at his size determination by establishing the spatial distribution of globular clusters.

The Milky Way galaxy is our cosmic home. A barred spiral galaxy stretching 100,000 light-years across. Here we explore our galactic neighborhood in more detail.

The Milky Way from a distance. So, what does the Milky Way would look like from the outside? How many spiral arms there are? How big is the galaxy and how many stars does it hold?

Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Previously, our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms.

The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky when you see it in a really dark area. Tell me more about galaxies.

Milky Way Galaxy, Large spiral galaxy (roughly 150,000 light-years in diameter) that contains Earth’s solar system. It includes the multitude of stars whose light is seen as the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band that encircles the sky, defining the plane of the galactic disk.

Learn about the structure, history, and evolution of our galactic home, the Milky Way, from astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics. Explore how they use various methods and instruments to study the galaxy's spiral arms, disk, halo, black hole, and more.