Milky Way

The Milky Way Galaxy, commonly referred to as just the Milky Way, or sometimes simply as the Galaxy,^[a] is the home galaxy of our Solar System, and of Earth. It is agreed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, although observations suggest that it is a barred spiral galaxy. It contains 100-400 billion stars and an estimated 50 billion planets, 500 million of which could be located in the habitable zone of their parent star.^[12] The Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies and is one of around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
The Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy halfway out from the center, on the inner edge of the Orion–Cygnus Arm. The Sun orbits around the center of the galaxy in a galactic year—once every 225-250 million Earth years.
The "Milky Way" is a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn translated from the Greek Γαλαξίας (Galaxias), referring to the pale band of light formed by stars in the galactic plane as seen from Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
From wikipedia