The Milky Way is a popular galaxy in our universe. Did you know that there are actually billions of galaxies in our universe as well? The Milky Way comes from the translation of the Latin words "Via Lactea", which comes from the Greek words "Kiklios Galaxious" which translates as milky circle. The Greek myth on how it was created started when Zues was bringing baby Heracles to his mother to be fed, and the Milky Way was simply spilled milk. Scientists believe the Milky Way to be about 800 million to 13.5 billion years old. Can you imagine being that old and looking so great? The diameter of the Milky Way galaxy range is about 100,000 to 120,000 light years. Astronomers have used Kepler's 3rd Law to study the mass of the galaxy. Kepler's 3rd Law relates orbit radius and period with central mass. When you take the radius of our orbit with the center of the galaxy and the time it takes to complete one orbit you can plug in those facts to Kepler's 3rd Law. You would get about 750 billion to 1 trillion solar masses. As you can tell, the galaxy is very big, in fact there are about 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Even though the Milky Way is GIANT, there are still other galaxies out there that we may not be able to see that are EVEN BIGGER!
An overview of the Milky Way
A side view of the Milky Way
"The Milky Way Galaxy." The Milky Way Galaxy. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2014. <http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/milkywaygalaxy.html>.
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