* Diameter: About 100,000 light-years across.
* Thickness: About 1,000 light-years thick at its central bulge.
* Number of stars: Estimated to contain between 100 and 400 billion stars.
To put this into perspective:
* A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. That's about 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers).
* If you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way galaxy.
It's important to note:
* The Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.
* There are much larger galaxies out there, but the Milky Way is still incredibly vast.
