Deep-sky object
The Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy we live in; its centre is 26 582 light-years away, in Sagittarius, about 87 000 light-years across.
Everything else on this map is inside it. The Sun sits a little more than halfway out from its centre.
It is on the live 3D map, where it really is.
Key facts
- Type
- Barred spiral galaxy — the one we live in
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Distance
- 26 582 light-years
- Size
- about 87 000 light-years across
See it from here
Bright enough to see with your own eyes from a dark place.
How the map draws it
Drawn from published dimensions for a point-cloud model of the Milky Way · the disc, bar and arms follow published measurements (Reid et al. 2019 for the arms and the distance to the centre); nobody has seen our galaxy from outside, so the picture is an illustration and the stars around you are the measured part; the dark lanes are dust drawn along the arms’ inner edges, where other spirals show it, and are not a map of ours.