Can someone explain to me what the milky way is? Not the candy bar.?

Question

This isn't a homework question. My son is into space and the solar system and I never really understood what the milky way was. It was a question he asked. I am just utilizing my options.

Answer 1

The galaxy in which we live is called the milky way.
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIMGuide2Galaxy_508.html
it is one of billions of billions of galaxies in the universe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgg2tpUVbXQ

If you were in a dark area,
where you could see the stars brightly at night
you would see this.
I believe this is what most people are referring to when they mention the milky way.
http://epod.usra.edu/archive/images/summermilkyway_gross.jpg
this is actually a large portion of galactic arms and the center of our galaxy your seeing in the sky.

by the way, inside the core of the milky way, there's a black hole
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/images/mw_arms.jpg&imgrefurl=http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/MW.html&h=484&w=592&sz=91&hl=en&start=24&um=1&tbnid=C5tPuTN0cl8ECM:&tbnh=110&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmilky%2Bway%2Barms%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN

Answer 2

It's the name of the galaxy that our solar system is in. It's estimated that the Milky Way contains approximately 100 billion stars, which is an average sized galaxy.

And the latest estimate is that there are about, I think, 3 trillion other galaxies in the entire universe.

If you can get out into the country on a clear night, you can kind of "see" the Milky Way. It's the much brighter "stripe" of stars in the sky. In the mountains this stripe gets so bright that you can practically see by it, even if there's no moon.

The reason it looks like this is that the Milky Way is shaped kind of like a frisbee. The bright stripe is because you're looking at the galaxy just like looking at a frisbee from the outer edge.

Answer 3

The Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system of stars and an interstellar medium of gas and dust.
Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars up to giants with one trillion stars, all orbiting a common center of mass. Our Milky Way galaxy has about 200-400 billion stars.
Galaxies can also contain many multiple star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds.

Galaxies are sometimes called "island universes" because they are like "islands" of stars and matter in a "sea" of empty space.

Answer 4

The milky way is a spiral galaxy about 100,000 light years in diameter.
It is made up of solar systems,like ours.
We are positioned in one of the outer arms and it took us 4.5 billion years to get here.
Many solar systems preceded us and they have migrated towards the galactic center and make up the material that drives the evolution of the galaxy.

Answer 5

The "Milky Way" is the proper name for our galaxy. The band of stars you can see on a dark night is only a small fraction of that galaxy, but that is also called the milky way.

Answer 6

its a cluster of LOADS of stars!
i just learnt that the other day at school :)

Answer 7

i am not going to tell you the answer but i will tell you where you can find it. simply google it or use another search engine to find the answer. hope this helps!!