The Milky Way Galaxy Quiz

The Milky Way galaxy is home to Earth.

The Milky Way is a spiral-shaped galaxy. More than two-thirds of the known galaxies are spiral-shaped.

The Earth is located in the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. At 2.3 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy is the most distant thing that can be seen with the naked eye. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our solar system within the Milky Way.

There are an estimated 100 billion to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

Dark matter is estimated to constitute up to 90 percent of the mass of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Milky Way galaxy has the approximate diameter of 100,000 light-years.

Scientists believe that a massive black hole is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers also believe that black holes form the center of most galaxies in the universe.

Very little light radiates from the area around Sagittarius A.

William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel developed the grindstone model of the Milky Way galaxy.

Dust and gas is thick between the stars.

Baade's window is one of six such anomalies and is named after the German-American astrophysicist Walter Baade.

Shapely also discovered that galaxies tend to occur in clusters.

When viewed from Earth, the center of the Milky Way galaxy is found within the constellation Sagittarius.

Earth is about 25,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Earth also is roughly 25,000 light-years from the outer rim of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Milky Way galaxy is constantly rotating along with all the stellar systems within the galaxy.

Our solar system orbits the Milky Way galaxy approximately once every 250 million years.

The galactic disk is 100,000 light-years across.

The nuclear bulge is about 10,000 light-years across.

The Magellanic Clouds are also in the Local Group.

More than 30 galaxies make up the Local Group. The Local Group is spread over a diameter of roughly 10 million light-years.

A galaxy is defined as a group of stars, star clusters, gas, dust and dark matter all bound together by gravity.

The Greeks originally called our galaxy "Galaxias Kyklos," which translates to "milky circle." The Romans later adapted the name to the Latin "Via Lactea," which translates to "Road of Milk."

The globular clusters are found in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy. There are approximately 100 globular clusters in the galaxy made up of stars that may be up to 15 billion years old.

The orbital speed of our solar system within the Milky Way galaxy is 220 kilometers per second.

The stars are concentrated in the spiral arms of the disk.

The Virgo Supercluster of galaxies is between 100 and 200 million light-years in diameter.

Democritus helped develop the atomic theory of the universe, too.

In 1610, Galileo used a telescope to prove that the Milky Way was made of numerous faint stars.

More than 500 solar systems have been found in the Milky Way galaxy. There are at least 100 billion stars in the galaxy.