Milky Way explained to kids

The Milky Way is the name for our galaxy. A galaxy is a huge collection of stars, dust, and gas. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. That means it looks like a big spiral. Our solar system is located in one of the arms of the spiral. The Milky Way is huge! It is about 100,000 light-years across. That means it would take 100,000 years for light to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other! The Milky Way is home to billions of stars. Our sun is just one of those stars. The Milky Way is also home to planets, comets, asteroids, and dust. The Milky Way is thought to be about 13.6 billion years old. That means it formed not long after the Big Bang. The Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the Universe. We can see some of these other galaxies with telescopes. The Milky Way is constantly changing. New stars are forming all the time. And old stars are dying all the time too. The Milky Way is one of the few galaxies that we can see with our eyes. We can see it as a faint band of light across the night sky. It looks like a cloud. That is why we call it the Milky Way.