How Big Is the Milky Way Galaxy?

Let’s look at a comparison and some more details to give you a better idea how big the Milky Way galaxy is.

If the Milky Way were the size of a football field, 100 meters or 110 yards, our entire solar system would be only 1 mm big, like a grain of sand.
The closest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way is the Andromeda galaxy, which is quite a bit larger at 220,000 light years across. It is 2.7 million light years away.
The Milky Way galaxy has at least 200 billion stars in it.
It is a barred spiral galaxy and we reside in the Orion arm.
The closest galaxy is the small Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, 60,000 light years away, and it is spiraling into the Milky Way galaxy.
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 26,000 light years from our Sun.
All the stars which are visible from Earth are in the Milky Way galaxy.
When looking at it in the night sky, the center of the Milky Way galaxy is in the area of the Sagittarius constellation, and it looks brightest there.
The dark areas in the night sky and in the Milky Way galaxy are dark nebulae, which block the light from distant stars.

Etymology and Mythology

Now that you know how big the Milky Way galaxy is, lets look at some more details about the galaxy.

The Milky Way galaxy was named from the Greek word for “milk.”
In mythology, the goddess Hera was nursing her son Hercules, and some of the milk was spilled.

Other cultures also have stories about the creation of the Milky Way galaxy. Here are a few of them:

The Cherokee Indians tell of a time when there were not many stars in the sky. The people depended on corn for their food and discovered one day that something was eating large amounts of cornmeal at night. They saw huge dog prints and thought it was a spirit dog. They waited for it the next night and frightened it off with drums and rattles. As it flew away, the cornmeal was spilling out of its mouth and each piece became a star. The path the dog took was called "the place where the dog ran" and that would be the Milky Way.

Egyptians thought the milk came from the cow goddess Bata. In Sanskrit, the Milky Way is called the “Ganges of the heavens” and in Armenian mythology it is the "Trail of the Straw Thief." In areas of Europe, the Milky Way was called the “Bird’s Path” because of the path of migratory birds. The Chinese call it the “Silver River System” and it was called “Winter Avenue” in Sweden.

There are also plenty of other factors to know, other than how big the Milky Way galaxy is:

The Milky Way galaxy is spiral in shape with a bar-shaped center area. Ninety percent of its mass is dark matter and the rest is gas, dust, and stars. It has a very massive black hole at its center. It is moving through space at 630 km per second.
Its estimated age is around 13.6 billion years, which puts it almost as old as the Universe. The disk and the bulge in the center probably formed about 10 to 12 billion years ago.
Get ready to think even bigger than you have. The Milky Way galaxy is part of a group of galaxies called the Virgo Supercluster. Our closest neighbors are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy.
The four main arms of the Milky Way galaxy are named the Carina and Sagittarius arm, the Perseus Arm, the Norma and Cygnus Arm, and the Scutum-Crux Arm. The Orion arm, where we live, is one of the smaller arms.

So, now you know how big the Milky Way galaxy is, as well as some other key details.