The Milky Way is not just a super delicious chocolate bar, it's also the name of the galaxy that we live in. If you've ever been in a very dark place, you might have seen the dust towards the galaxy's center crossing through the night sky like the picture below.
The Milky Way is classified as a barred spiral arm galaxy. This means it has arm like structure (~5 arms), and a bar of material crossing through the center. It's about 13.2 billion years old and 100,000 light years wide. This means that if you traveled at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to get from one end to the other! At the center, we think there is a super massive black hole, but don't worry, we won't get sucked in anytime soon! Near the sun, the galaxy rotates at ~220 km/s, which is close to 500,000mph! Are you dizzy yet?
We aren't 100% certain about our galaxies structure because we can't take a picture of it. That would require sending a telescope way above the galaxy, which is something we are not capable of doing. But we think our galaxy looks similar to the many other spiral galaxies that exist. Below is an artists impression of the Milky Way.
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Image credit: Mark A. Garlick
