# Milky Way

Also called: our galaxy, galactic plane.

Our home galaxy — and the faint band of light across a dark sky, which is its disk seen from inside.

The Milky Way is a barred [spiral galaxy](https://astropilot.space/glossary/spiral-galaxy) about 100,000 light-years across with a few hundred billion stars. The Sun sits in its disk, about 26,000 light-years from the centre, so we see the disk as a glowing band all around the sky, cut by [dark lanes](https://astropilot.space/glossary/dark-nebula) of dust.

The brightest part, towards the centre in Sagittarius and Scorpius, is highest on summer evenings from the northern hemisphere and on winter evenings from the southern. It needs a dark sky — it's invisible from most towns.

**At the eyepiece:** A dark site and fully [dark-adapted](https://astropilot.space/glossary/dark-adaptation) eyes turn the Milky Way from a faint mist into a sky full of structure. Sweep it with binoculars.

**Examples:** [M24](https://astropilot.space/object/M24.md), [C99](https://astropilot.space/object/C99.md), [NGC7000](https://astropilot.space/object/NGC7000.md)

**Related:** [Galaxy](https://astropilot.space/glossary/galaxy.md), [Light pollution](https://astropilot.space/glossary/light-pollution.md), [Bortle scale](https://astropilot.space/glossary/bortle-scale.md), [Star cloud](https://astropilot.space/glossary/star-cloud.md)

From the AstroPilot astronomy glossary: https://astropilot.space/glossary/milky-way