The Milky Way (from the Latin Via Lactea) is the galaxy to which the solar system belongs. It is a barred spiral galaxy, that is, a galaxy composed of a core crossed by a bar-shaped structure from which the spiral arms branch off following a logarithmic trend.
Observing the Milky Way from the Earth, which lies in one of its spiral arms, it appears in the night sky as a clear band of white light that crosses the entire celestial vault, where more stars gather than in other areas of the sky and which appears slightly different depending on which hemisphere you are in.
The stellar disk of the Milky Way has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years and a thickness, in the region of the arms, of about 1,000 light-years.
