How Big is the Milky Way?
The Milky Way is a huge group of many billions of stars called a galaxy. There are more than a billion other galaxies just like the Milky Way in the universe. The Sun, Moon, Earth, and all the planets form only a small part of our Milky Way. The rest is made up of clouds of dust and gas, and over 200,000,000 stars. Some of these
So how big is the universe? No one knows if the universe is infinitely large, or even if ours is the only universe that exists. And other parts of the universe, very far away, might be quite different from the universe closer to home. Future NASA missions will continue to search for clues to the ultimate size and scale of our cosmic home. Go on the full exploration of the size of our universe at: How big is our universe? Beautiful images and straight-forward methods and ideas take you from our solar system, into the realm of the stars, the galaxies and finally into the vast panorama of the observable universe. You can also download and print a pdf version of these explorations. + View site The Universe Forum talks more about size and distance in the universe. + View site Learn more about the recent transit of Venus. + View site Learn more about the WMAP satellite. + View site Learn more about WMAP education. + View site For kids 14 and up, check out investigations into the destiny of o
