Our home galaxy: The Milky Way, our home, is a spiral galaxy with a disk of stars spanning more than 100,000 light-years. Earth is located along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, about halfway from the center.

Milky Way center: This dazzling infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy.

Andromeda galaxy: The nearest cosmic neighbor of our Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda is located about 2.5 million light-years away.

Galactic center: This panoramic image provides an unprecedented X-ray view above and below the center of the Milky Way.

Human perspective: From our perspective on Earth, the Milky Way looks like a faint, milky band of light arcing across the entire sky, which is how it got its name. This feature marks the central disk of our home galaxy seen edge on.

Large Magellanic Cloud: This vibrant image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years from Earth, is one of a handful of dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way.

Heart of Milky Way: The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s reveals a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core in a new light. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features.