Forrest Adams age 16, of Atlanta, Ga,,

How big is the Galaxy?

The Galaxy is our own special home in the heavens. It contains the sun, moons, the planets, comets and all the Solar System, It also contains all the stars we see when we look up at the night sky, The Milky Way, that pale glimmering hoop you sometimes see over the sky, is the center of the Galaxy where the stars are thicker and maybe closer together. Billions and billions of stars make the vast system we call the Galaxy. We also call it a spiral nebula and an Island Universe.

In shape the Galaxy is rather like a pinwheel. It is whirling around at a great speed, Long arms trail and spiral out from the teeming stars. The vast distances must be measured by the speed of light. The unit of measure is the light year, This is the distance light travels in one year and light travels at about 186,000 miles each and every second. A light year is about six millions of millions of miles.

The longest measurement of the big round Galaxy is the diameter ‑ a line from side to side straight through the middle of the wheel. This distance is about 100000 light years, The pinwheel is thickest in the center and thins out to empty space at the rim, At Its thickest, the Galaxy is about 10,000 light years.  If you want these distances in regular miles, all you have to do is to multiply the numbers by six trillion.