The Milky Way is the galaxy which is the home of our Solar System together with at least 200 billion other stars (more recent estimates have given numbers around 400 billion) and their planets, and thousands of clusters and nebulae including at least almost all objects of Messier's catalog which are not galaxies on their own (the only possible exception may be M54 which may belong to SagDEG, a small galaxy which is currently in a close encounter with the Milky Way, and thus our closest known intergalactic neighbor).

As a galaxy, the Milky Way is actually a giant, as its mass is probably between 750 billion and one trillion solar masses, and its diameter is about 100,000 light years. Radio astronomial investigations of the distribution of hydrogen clouds have revealed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy of Hubble type Sb or Sc. Therefore, out galaxy has both a pronounced disk component exhibiting a spiral structure, and a prominent nuclear reagion which is part of a notable bulge/halo component. It is still not clear if it has a bar structure (so that it would be type SB) or not , but an increasing number of investigations

has given some evidence for this, so that the Milky Way may look like M61 or M83, and is perhaps best classified as SABbc