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How many light years across is our galaxy?

Best Answers

Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years (ly). It is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars. read more

NASA estimates the galaxy at 100,000 light-years across. Since one light year is about 9.5 x 10 12 km, so the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 9.5 x 10 17 km in diameter. The thickness of the galaxy ranges depending on how close you are to the center, but it’s tens of thousands of light-years across. read more

The Milky Way is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (about 100,000 light years or about 30 kpc) across. The Sun does not lie near the center of our Galaxy. It lies about 8 kpc from the center on what is known as the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. read more