Here are some amazing facts about huge island of matter and energy called galaxy, that we live in!

* Galaxies are spiraling whirlpools of matter and energy, which are like small oasis in the vast empty spaces of our universe. We live in one such galaxy, which we call the Milky Way!
* One light year is the distance traveled by light in a year and it amounts to about 9.4605284 × 1015 meters! Our Milky way galaxy disk is about 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1000 light years thick! It has up to 400 billion stars like our Sun!
* There are estimated to be about 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. The nearest spiral galaxy to our milky way is the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.6 million light years away! This galaxy is on a collision course with our galaxy, and will collide with it in some billion years!
* At the center of every galaxy, there resides a massive black hole! Even our Milky way galaxy has a massive black hole in its center.