Besides stars, what is in the midle of the Milky Way Galaxy?
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Just about all astronomers agree that at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy (and probably at the center of most other galaxies) lies a supermassive black hole. It probably has a mass at least 2-million times that of our Sun, and is approximately 96-million miles in diameter.\n\nThese figures come from careful observation and measurment of the motions of other objects near the galactic center.\n\nThis page has more info, plus a photo ---\nhttp://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021018.html
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planets, stars, and quasars
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"Our own Milky Way, a typical giant spiral galaxy, includes at least 100 billion stars in its diameter." \n100 billion\n\nEncyclopedia Britannica. Astronomy. 2000. "There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy" \n100 billion\n\nEddington, A. S. The Interior of a Star. 1926. "The Sun belongs to a system containing some 3,000 million stars." 3 billion\n\nBoorstein, Daniel J. Discovery of the World. New York: Random House, 1983: 320. "...the Galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters."\ninnumerable\n\nButterworth, Paul. Stars in Our Galaxy. Ask a High-Energy Astronomer. 1998. "We can only see a few thousand stars at most with our unaided eyes. These are a mixture of stars which are nearby, and bright stars which are further away; but they are only a tiny fraction of the 100,000,000,000 stars in our own galaxy." \n100 billion
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That would be the Milky Way, the same galaxy that Earth and our solar system is in..
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The Milky Way is moving at about 1,342,161 mph towards a galactic cluster known as Abell 3627\nhttp://answerway.com/expertans.php?category=243&expertname=Locii&catnam=Physics\n\nOur galaxy is NOT moving towards the center (or centre) of the universe. The universe has no center!\nhttp://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.9.FAQ\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
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Most astronomers believe that the Milky Way Galaxy -- the galaxy in which our solar system is located -- contains millions of black holes. Scientists have found a number of black holes in the Milky Way. These objects are in binary stars that give off X rays. A binary star is a pair of stars that orbit each other. \n\nhttp://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/blackhole_worldbook.html
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The obvious answer is black holes. But other kinds are non reflective nebulae and dark matter.
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Stars revolve around the center of the galaxy.\nThe Sun revolves around the center of the milky way galaxy.
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Smartie pants?\nEvidence points to a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy (Milky Way).  The black hole, with a mass more than three million times that of our sun, would appear to be in the constellation of Sagittarius.
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It is estimated that there are approximately 200 million stars in the Milky Way and each one has the potential to have a "solar system" of some type.  Depends on many factors and the type of planets that can exist around a particular star also have many factors.  A number of "solar systems" have been found around other stars.  A current list of them can be found at exoplanets.org
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The nearest galaxies to the Milky Way are two Magellanic clouds, LMC and SMC, and they are UNFATHOMABLY far away.  LMC is 50 kpc away, or about 160,000 LY.  JUST ONE LY is SIX TRILLION MILES.  So 960,000,000,000,000,000 miles away.
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Please make a distinction between the solar system and the Milky Way. The solar system consists of the sun, and the planets, asteroids, and comets orbiting the sun. There is one star in the solar system (the sun). The Milky Way is our galaxy and consists of billions of stars and presumably whatever planets, etc. orbit those other stars. The difference in size is quite considerable. If the solar system was only 2 yards across, the Mily Way would be 100,000 *miles* across.\n\nThe planets in our solar system are (in order from the sun) Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Xena (unofficial name...may become Sedna). Most asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter, but not all of them.
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200 billion stars in the Milky Way.
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An international team of astronomers from France, Italy, the UK and Australia has found a previously unknown galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way. This newly-discovered galaxy takes the record for the nearest galaxy to the centre of the Milky Way. Called the Canis Major dwarf galaxy after the constellation in which it lies, it is about 25000 light years away from thesolar system and 42000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way. This i closer than the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, discovered in 1994, which is also colliding with the Milky Way. The discovery shows that the Milky Way is building up its own disk by absorbing small satellite galaxies. The research is to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society within the next few weeks.\n\nThe discovery of the Canis Major dwarf was made possible by a recent survey of the sky in infrared light (the Two-Micron All Sky Survey or "2MASS"), which has allowed astronomers to look beyond the clouds of dust in the disk of the Milky Way. Until now, the dwarf galaxy lay undetected behind the dense disk. "It's like putting on infrared night-vision goggles," says team-member Dr Rodrigo Ibata of Strasbourg Observatory. "We are now able to study a part of the Milky Way that has been previously out of sight".\n\nThe new dwarf galaxy was detected by its M-giant stars =AD cool, red stars that shine especially brightly in infrared light. "We have used these rare M-giant stars as beacons to trace out the shape and location of the new galaxy because its numerous other stars are too faint for us to see," explains Nicolas Martin, also of Strasbourg Observatory. "They are particularly useful stars as we can measure their distances, and so map out the three-dimensional structure of distant regions of the Milky Way disk." In this way, the astronomers found the main dismembered corpse of the dwarf galaxy in Canis Major and long trails of stars leading back to it. It seems that streams of stars pulled out of the cannibalised Canis Major galaxy not only contribute to the outer reaches of the Milky Way's disk, but may also pass close to the Sun.\n\nAstronomers currently believe that large galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their present majestic proportions by consuming their smaller galactic neighbours. They have found that cannibalised galaxies add stars to the vast haloes around large galaxies. However, until now, they did not appreciate that even the disks of galaxies can grow in this fashion. Computer simulations show that the Milky Way has been taking stars from the Canis Major dwarf and adding them to its own disk - and will continue to do so.\n\n"On galactic scales, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is a lightweight of about only one billion Suns," said Dr. Michele Bellazzini of Bologna Observatory. "This small galaxy is unlikely to hold together much longer. It is being pushed and pulled by the colossal gravity of our Milky Way, which has been progressively stealing its stars and pulling it apart." Some remnants of the Canis Major dwarf form a ring around the disk of the Milky Way.\n\n"The Canis Major dwarf galaxy may have added up to 1% more mass to our Galaxy," said Dr Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney. "This is also an important discovery because it highlights that the Milky Way is not in its middle age - it is still forming." "Past interactions of the sort we are seeing here could be responsible for some of the exquisite detail we see today in the structure of the Galaxy," says Dr Michael Irwin of the University of Cambridge.
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Off course scienists investigate this. Our galaxy is pretty flat around where we are - only 3,000 light years wide. It gets thicker then that in the center -16,000 light years but that's still pretty thin compare to it's length - about 100,000 light years across. "above" and "below" us are other stars, possibly with other planets. Basically the same things that are "in front" and "behind" us across the length of the galactic disk. \nOn a very dark night you'll be able to see a bright band across the night sky - that's the Milky Way. You'll then be looking towards the galactic center. The pictures we recive from satelites and telescope come from different directions.\nAs for a 3D model of the universe there is such a project in progress but it deals with objects on a much larger scale - galaxy clusters, superclusters, walls and fillaments.
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What my colleagues are getting at is that stars (the most notable bodies within any galaxy) are simply extremely dense spheres of gas (usually mainly hydrogen and helium) that are so condensed by their collective gravitiy, they actually fuse together, forming heavier elements and releasing massive amounts of energy in the process.
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largest galaxy--\n\nThe Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: /ˌanˈdrɒmədə/, also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224; older texts often called it the Andromeda Nebula) is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 2.5[2] million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda, which lies in the northern hemisphere of the sky.\n\nAndromeda was believed to be the largest galaxy of the Local Group of galaxies, which consists of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. Due to recent findings based on improved measurements and data, scientists now believe that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and may be the most massive in the grouping.[5] However, recent observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that M31 contains one trillion (1012) stars, greatly exceeding the number of stars in our own galaxy.[6]\n\nThe Andromeda Galaxy is easily visible to the naked eye in a moderately dark sky, though such a sky is available only in smaller towns and isolated areas reasonably far from population centers and sources of light pollution. It appears quite small without a telescope because only the central part is bright enough to be visible, but the full angular diameter of the galaxy is seven times that of the full moon.