Question: what does the milkyway look like

Camilla Weiss answered on 26 Jan 2016:

The milky way is a barred spiral galaxy so it looks like a little glowing bar with two arms trailing around its centre (sort of hard to describe in just words – try googling it for pretty pictures). Because the Earth is located at the edge of one of the arms what we see is a thick disc-like band of ‘milky’ light across the sky. It looks milky because you can’t actually pick out any individual stars with the naked eye – just the glow from the billions and billions of stars. You can see it on a good dark clear night, depending on where you are and what time of year it is.