Space Exploration

The Galaxy

A Galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity.Examples of Galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars to gaints with a hundred tiollion stars or more, (mind blowing, I know), each orbiting thorugh their galaxy. Scientists have been able to segment galaxies into 4 main types: spiral, elliptical, perculiar, and irregular. Our cosmic home, The Milky Way, is in fact a spiral galaxy stretching a minding staggering 100000 light-years in diameter and contains hundreds of billions of stars.
Our cosmic home, is really old, quite literally, believed to be approximately 13.6 billion years old, that's nearly as old as the universe itself. The very center of our galaxy habours a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It has a mass of about 4 million times that of the Sun.
Our galaxy, The Milky Way is very busy, so busy that the gas and dust clouds within it give birth to new stars, including ones like our Sun which is why our galaxy houses billions of stars. It is estimated to contain between 100 billion to about 400 billion. Our understanding of the Milky Way is constantly evolving due to advancements in telescopes and space missions. We continue to uncover is mysteries and learn more about its structure and composition.