What type of galaxy is the Milky Way?

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. More precisely, astronomers classify it as a barred spiral galaxy because a long, straight bar of stars crosses its central region, with spiral arms extending from the bar’s ends.

The galaxy contains a flattened disk of stars, gas, and dust, surrounded by a central bulge, a stellar halo, and a much larger dark-matter halo. Its spiral arms are especially rich in gas, dust, young stars, star-forming regions, and bright nebulae. The Sun lies in a smaller local feature of this disk rather than in one of the Milky Way’s largest major arms.

A common mix-up is confusing the Milky Way’s shape with its appearance from Earth. Seen from inside the disk, the galaxy looks like a pale, cloudy band across the night sky. That band is the combined light of distant stars, many of which are hidden by interstellar dust. The Milky Way is not elliptical or irregular, although its disk is warped and its spiral structure is more complicated than a perfect pinwheel.