Central Milky Way Optical image of star clouds which lie in the direction of the central core of our galaxy the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius The bright areas are star clouds containing millions of stars These are intersected by dark dust lanes that block out the light from stars behind The dust clouds and stars obscure the centre of the galaxy itself Also seen are glowing interstellar clouds of gas nebulae pink The Milky Way is a diskshaped spiral galaxy that contains at least billion stars
