The Milky Way is a disk about 120,000 light years across, with a central bulge that has a diameter of 12,000 light years. As seen from The Himalayas mountains. Photo by: Anton Jankovoy

The disk is far from perfectly flat though, as can be seen in the picture below. What warped it? Two of the galaxy’s neighbors – the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. Photo by: Dave Morrow

The Milky Way has a halo of dark matter that makes up over 90% of its mass. That means that all of what we can see (with the naked eye or telescopes) makes up less than 10% of the mass of the Milky Way. Photo by: Elmar Akhmetov

Milky Way over Idaho, USA. As galaxies go, the Milky Way is a middleweight with 200 billion stars. Photo by: unknown

You may not think so by looking at it, but the Milky Way is full of dust and gas. Milky Wat over forest. Photo by: Marius Kasteckas

Milky Way over Catherine hills bay, Australia. The Milky Way wasn’t always as it is today, a beautiful barred spiral. It became its current size and shape by eating up other galaxies. Photo by: unknown

Milky Way over Tyrol Mountains, Austria. We can’t take a picture of the Milky Way from above (yet) because we are inside the galactic disk, about 26,000 light years from the galactic center. Photo by: Michi B

Milky Way and northern light together in one photo. Photo by: Iurie Belegurschi

Beautiful photograph of Milky Way over El Castillo pyramid at night, Mexico. Photo by: Piotr Nikiel

Milky way over mount Fuji, Japan. Photo by: unknown

A computer generated image of how would Milky Way looked like as seen from space. Photo by: NASA | edited

How would Los Angles looked like if all lights were off? Milky Way would be very visible. This photo is part of top gallery series How Would Major Cities Look Like With Lights Off? Photo by: Thierry Cohen