how far is it to the center of the milky way from earth
Milky Way The Sun is 25,000–28,000 ly (7.7–8.6 kpc) from the Galactic Center. This value is estimated using geometric-based methods or by measuring selected astronomical objects that serve as standard candles, with different techniques yielding various values within this approximate range.[15][16][17][90][91][92] In the inner few kpc (around 10,000 light-years radius) is a dense concentration of mostly old stars in a roughly spheroidal shape called the bulge.[93] It has been proposed that the Milky Way lacks a bulge formed due to a collision and merger between previous galaxies, and that instead it has a pseudobulge formed by its central bar.[94]
Milky Way The Milky Way contains between 200 and 400 billion stars[61][62] and at least 100 billion planets.[63] The exact figure depends on the number of very-low-mass stars, which are hard to detect, especially at distances of more than 300 ly (90 pc) from the Sun. As a comparison, the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy contains an estimated one trillion (1012) stars.[64] Filling the space between the stars is a disk of gas and dust called the interstellar medium. This disk has at least a comparable extent in radius to the stars,[65] whereas the thickness of the gas layer ranges from hundreds of light years for the colder gas to thousands of light years for warmer gas.[66][67]
Supermassive black hole Astronomers are very confident that the Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, 26,000 light-years from the Solar System, in a region called Sagittarius A*[19] because:
Milky Way The Sun is near the inner rim of the Orion Arm, within the Local Fluff of the Local Bubble, and in the Gould Belt, at a distance of 26.4 ± 1.0 kly (8.09 ± 0.31 kpc)[15][16][17] from the Galactic Center. The Sun is currently 5–30 parsecs (16–98 ly) from the central plane of the Galactic disk.[145] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 2,000 parsecs (6,500 ly).[146] The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone.