Above and Beyond: Stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way

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All the stars we see in our sky from the Northern hemisphere -- in remote areas, perhaps a couple thousand -- belong to our Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars. 

Credits


Stars
 
 
Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach.
 
All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA, ESA, and STScI except:
 
·       Taurus constellation drawing from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory
·       Winter Circle star field image created with Stellarium
·       Omega Centauri ground-based image courtesy of F. Lehman (South Florida Dark Sky Observers)
·       Photo of night sky at twilight courtesy of ESO/H. H. Heyer
·       Milky Way star field photo courtesy of ESO/C. Malin
·       Orion Nebula 3D animation courtesy of ESO/M. Kornmesser
·       Star formation animation courtesy of NCSA/NASA/A. Kritsuk and M. Norman (UC San Diego) and A. Boley (Univ. of Florida)
·       Photo of the Milky Way over the Austrian Alps copyright Babak A. Tafreshi (TWAN)
 
 
Written by Vanessa Thomas
Designed by John Godfrey

Transcript


(SPEECH) 
[DOWNBEAT MUSIC] 
 
(DESCRIPTION) 
A starry sky over a forest. 
 
Text, STARS IN OUR GALAXY. Milky Way. 
 
All the stars we see from Earth's Northern Hemisphere belong to our Milky Way Galaxy. 
 
In a remote location away from city lights, we can see up to a couple thousand stars. 
 
But our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars. 
 
Beyond our galaxy are hundreds of billions of other galaxies, each one containing billions of their own stars.