All the stars you can see at night belong to our galaxy, the Milky Way. To get a grasp of the size of the Milky Way, let’s consider the time for light to travel from one place to another. It takes about one second for light to reach us from the surface of the Moon, eight minutes from the Sun, and four years from the nearest other star. But from the edges of the Milky Way, light takes tens of thousands of years! And despite its vastness, the Milky Way is just one galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies scattered in the immensity of the universe.
Our closest neighbours are small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Beyond them, the Andromeda Galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way. The Milky Way will eventually collide with it. For the moment though, its light takes more than two million years to reach us. Even farther away lies the Virgo duster, which comprises more than a thousand galaxies. But this is still the neighbourhood of our Milky Way. The farthest galaxy ever observed is so far it takes light 13 billion years to reach us. Wherever telescopes look, they spot thousands and thousands of galaxies!
Picture Credit : Google
