what is the thickness of the milky way
Milky Way The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group, with its stellar disk approximately 100,000 ly (30 kpc) in diameter, and, on average, approximately 1,000 ly (0.3 kpc) thick.[4][5] As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the Solar System out to Neptune were the size of a US quarter (24.3 mm (0.955 in)), the Milky Way would be approximately the size of the continental United States.[42] A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may belong to the Milky Way itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane.[27] If so, that would mean a diameter of 150,000–180,000 light-years (46–55 kpc).[43]
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Galaxy In 1922, the Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik gave a distance determination that supported the theory that the Andromeda Nebula is indeed a distant extra-galactic object.[43] Using the new 100 inch Mt. Wilson telescope, Edwin Hubble was able to resolve the outer parts of some spiral nebulae as collections of individual stars and identified some Cepheid variables, thus allowing him to estimate the distance to the nebulae: they were far too distant to be part of the Milky Way.[44] In 1936 Hubble produced a classification of galactic morphology that is used to this day.[45]
Milky Way The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years (ly).[27][28][29] It is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars.[30][31] There are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way.[32][33] The Solar System is located within the disk, 26,490 (± 100) light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust. The stars in the innermost 10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The galactic center is an intense radio source known as Sagittarius A*, likely a supermassive black hole of 4.100 (± 0.034) million solar masses.