La galaxia de la Vía Láctea o simplemente Vía Láctea es una galaxia espiral donde se encuentra el sistema solar y, por lo tanto, la Tierra. Según las observaciones, posee una masa de 1012 masas solares y es una espiral barrada. Su diámetro medio se estima en unos 100 000 años luz, equivalentes a casi un trillón y medio (1,42×1018) de kilómetros o 9480 millones de unidades astronómicas. Se calcula que contiene entre 200 000 y 400 000 millones de estrellas. La distancia desde el Sol hasta el centro de la galaxia es de alrededor de 27 700 años luz (8500 pc), es decir, el 55 % del radio total galáctico. La Vía Láctea forma parte de un conjunto de unas cuarenta galaxias llamado Grupo Local, y es la segunda más grande y brillante tras la galaxia de Andrómeda (aunque puede ser la más masiva, como lo muestra un estudio reciente). El nombre Vía Láctea proviene de la mitología griega y en latín significa camino de leche. Esa es, en efecto, la apariencia de la tenue banda de luz que atraviesa el firmamento terrestre, y así lo afirma la mitología griega, explicando que se trata de leche derramada del pecho de la diosa Hera (Juno para los romanos). Rubens representa la leyenda en su obra El nacimiento de la Vía Láctea. Sin embargo, ya en la Antigua Grecia, el astrónomo Demócrito (460 a. C.-370 a. C.) sugirió que aquel haz blanco en el cielo era en realidad un conglomerado de muchísimas estrellas demasiado tenues individualmente como para ser reconocidas a simple vista. Su idea, no obstante, no halla respaldo hasta 1609 cuando el astrónomo italiano Galileo Galilei hace uso del telescopio y constata que Demócrito estaba en lo cierto, ya que a donde quiera que mirase, aquel se encontraba lleno de estrellas.

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(This article is about the galaxy. For other uses, see Milky Way (disambiguation).) The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. The term "Milky Way" is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos, "milky circle"). From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. 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. Subsequent sensitive observations such as the Hubble telescope's Ultra Deep Field revealed a myriad of faint galaxies, which led to an estimate that the observable universe contained about 200 billion galaxies. A 2016 study estimated that the observable universe contained ten times that number or 2 trillion galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that has a diameter usually considered to be about 100,000–120,000 light-years but may be 150,000–180,000 light-years. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars. There are likely at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 27,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust called the Orion Arm. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole. Stars and gases at a wide range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests that much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been termed "dark matter". The rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun. The Milky Way as a whole is moving at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to extragalactic frames of reference. The oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself and thus likely formed shortly after the Dark Ages of the Big Bang. The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which is a component of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster.

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