Galaxy star biography

With a mass of four million Suns, a supermassive black hole (known as Sagittarius A*) sits at the centre of the Galaxy, its enormous gravity governing the orbits of stars in its vicinity.

Galaxy star biography

Stars have been observed orbiting this black hole at distances as close as a few light-days.

Moving outwards, we fly through a multitude of stars of the Galactic Bulge. The bulge is located in the central portion of the Milky Way and hosts about ten billion stars, which are mainly old and red.

The bulge has an overall elongated shape that resembles that of a peanut-shaped bar, with a half-length of about 10 000 light-years, making the Milky Way a barred spiral galaxy.

Beyond the bulge, the journey continues across the Galaxy, flying through the younger population of stars in the stellar disc.

Home to most of the Milky Way's stars, the stellar disc is a flattened structure with a radius of about 50 000 light-years and a vertical height of only 1000 light-years. The