What galaxy contains the Solar System?

The galaxy containing the Solar System is the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars, including the Sun. Our Solar System lies in the Orion Arm, also called the Orion Spur, roughly 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center. Because Earth is inside the galaxy’s disk, the Milky Way appears as a broad, glowing band across the night sky.

The name can cause a common mix-up: “Milky Way” may mean either the entire galaxy or the hazy band of stars visible from Earth. The band is the galaxy viewed from within its disk, where distant stars overlap along our line of sight.

The Solar System is not near the center of the galaxy. It completes one orbit around the Galactic Center in roughly 230 million years, while the galaxy itself is surrounded by a much larger halo of old stars, globular clusters, and dark matter.