• Question: what is the milkyway?

    Asked by isobelcox to Paul, David, Colin on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: David McKeown

      David McKeown answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Firstly it is a very tasty chocolate bar. I must go buy one

      Secondly (and I think you might be asking about this one) it is the galaxy that contains our Solar System (you know the one with the earth, you know … you live there). The milkyway is really big though and the earth is only a tiny tiny part of it. The earth orbits around a star (we call “the sun”) but the Milky Way contain 200–400 billion stars. It is It is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, which is really old, I think there is a yoghurt in my fridge about the same age.

    • Photo: Paul Higgins

      Paul Higgins answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      The milky way is the galaxy we live in. It is a spiral galaxy with a “bar” at the center. It is about 100,000 light years across and it has a black hole at the center that weighs about 6 million times the mass of the Sun. If you look at a picture of the andromeda galaxy, it looks very similar to the milky way- and in about 4 billion years, the andromeda galaxy will collide with the milky way! If you are out in the country on a clear night, you might be able to see a hazy band across the sky. That is the milky way- loads of stars and gas and dust…

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