Milky Way

The galaxy in which the Earth is found. When viewed from the Earth and its environs, it appears in the night sky as a hazy band of white light (hence "milky") across the celestial sphere, formed by stars within the disc of its namesake galaxy. The Milky Way appears brightest in the direction of Sagittarius, where the galactic center lies.

The Milky Way galaxy is a large spiral galaxy with a total mass of about 10^12 solar masses, comprising 200-400 billion stars. The galactic disk has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years. The stars in the Galaxy's disk rotate around the Galaxy's center, which is suspected to harbour a supermassive black hole. Exerpt from Wikipedia. Information held under GNU Free Documentation License.