...mother earth beauty...

...starry starry night..

The northern lights and the Milky Way above the arctic landscape of Iceland.
(Photo credit: nuitsacrees./TWAN)

   The central bulge of the Milky Way, the brightest band of the galaxy, is captured in a starry night sky of Australia.

(Photo credit : terrastro /TWAN)

 

The arc of the Milky Way rising above central Iran, and fades away in the northeast because of light pollution in the historic city of Isfahan.
(photo credit: TWAN)

     The band of the Milky Way arcs above Piton de la Fournaise, a very active volcano on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

(Photo credit: lucperrot /TWAN) 

 

 Arctic Lights (photo credit: TWAN)

Ontario, Canada

The Milky Way is estimated to contain 200 billion, or up to 400 billion, suns (if small-mass stars predominate). As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if it were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the Solar System would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 inches) in width. The Galactic Halo extends outward, but is limited in size by the orbits of the two Milky Way satellites, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, whose perigalacticon is at ~180,000 light-years. It is extremely difficult to define the age at which the Milky Way formed, but the age of the oldest stars in the Galaxy is now estimatedt o be about 13.6 billion years, nearly as old as the Universe itself.