More than 100 billion stars make up the Milky Way, which is only one of billions of galaxies. Stars in the Milky Way fan out from the center in wide, curving arms. The sun is located about in the middle of one of the arms. Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way was formed between 10 billion and 15 billion years ago. The sun's age of about 4,600,000,000 years makes it one of the fairly young stars in the Galaxy.
Some stars are much younger than the sun.
They were formed during the last few million years. The sun is the yellow star at the center of our solar system around which Earth and the other planets revolve. Astronomers believe there are many other sunlike stars with their own systems of planets elsewhere in the galaxy. We'd like to hear from you. Click here to submit your comments.