We live in the Milky way but it is also home to many billions of stars. There are billions of other galaxies in the universe just like the Milky Way. The earth and other planets are just a small part of our galaxy, the galaxy has clouds of dust and gas and 200,000,000 stars! Stars also come in different sizes. If you want an idea of how big the galaxy is you have to think about how long it takes light to travel. It takes light 8 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. It takes 100,000 years for light to travel from one end of the milky way to the other! The Milky Way is shaped like a pancakes with stars the spiral out of the center.