how big is the milky way galaxy

The Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light‑years across and about 1,000 light‑years thick in the disk, though its faint outer regions may extend much farther.

Quick Scoop: Core Facts

• Diameter of main disk: about 100,000 light‑years (some studies suggest the very faint outskirts could reach close to 200,000 light‑years, but 100,000 is the commonly quoted size).

• Thickness of the stellar disk: roughly 1,000 light‑years near the Sun’s region, thicker toward the central bulge.

• Number of stars: on the order of 100–400 billion stars.

• Shape: a barred spiral galaxy (a flat rotating disk with spiral arms and a straight “bar” of stars across the center).

Putting that size in perspective

• Light travels about 9.5 trillion kilometers in one year, so crossing the Milky Way’s main disk would mean traveling for 100,000 years at light‑speed.

• If our Solar System were shrunk to the size of a coin, the Milky Way would be like a disk spanning thousands of kilometers in comparison, showing how tiny our local neighborhood really is.

Latest discussion and “new size” ideas

• Most professional references and educational sites still quote “about 100,000 light‑years” as the standard size for the Milky Way’s disk.

• Some researchers and forum discussions highlight work suggesting the stellar or gas disk might have very faint extensions that push the effective diameter closer to ~200,000 light‑years, but this involves low‑density outer regions and is less certain than the inner 100,000‑light‑year disk.

Mini forum‑style takeaway

“So, how big is the Milky Way galaxy?”
Think: a flat, starry city about 100,000 light‑years wide, a thousand light‑years thick, holding hundreds of billions of stars – with a ghostly, much fainter ‘suburb’ that might stretch even farther out.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.