The Milky Way is an unfathomable 13 BILLION years old! It started to form about 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The Milky Way is, of course, home to Earth, up to 100 billion planets, and around 200 billion stars!

Facts about the Milky Way

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.

A galaxy is a massive collection of stars, dust, gas and dark matter held together by gravity.

The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.

At the centre of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. Luckily for us, our solar system is about 27,000 light-years away.

The next closest large spiral galaxy to Earth is the Andromeda galaxy.

Last Updated on January 17, 2024 by Emma Vanstone