The Milky Way
This map shows the full extent of the Milky Way galaxy – a spiral galaxy of at least two hundred billion stars. Our Sun is buried deep within the Orion Arm about 26 000 light years from the centre. Towards the centre of the Galaxy the stars are packed together much closer than they are where we live. Notice also the presence of small globular clusters of stars which lie well outside the plane of the Galaxy, and notice too the presence of a nearby dwarf galaxy – the Sagittarius dwarf – which is slowly being swallowed up by our own galaxy.