Fact Sheet
Home Base
An artist's concept shows a new "roadmap" of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It shows an elongated "bar" of stars in the center of the galaxy, with two major spiral arms wrapping around it. Several partial arms also are visible. The entire galaxy spans about 100,000 light-years. This view is based on a survey of the galaxy's stars by Spitzer Space Telescope, which mapped the infrared glow from millions of stars and vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust. [NASA/JPL/R. Benjamin (U. Wisconsin)/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)]
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