Our Milky Way Galaxy. This is our Milky Way Galaxy as seen in the near-infrared by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Our Galaxy is one of these galaxies which are containing hundred billion stars and which themselves exist by billions in the Universe. As we are living inside our Galaxy, we are not able to see it like an external observer would, that is like such famed and popular objects like the Andromeda or the Whirlpool galaxies. The Milky Way -this hazy and faintly glowing strip of our night sky- allows us such a sense however. Milky Way is our Galaxy seen edge on. At a certain line of sight we are seeing the Galaxy disk in perspective. Building on that, such photographs like the one shown here are imaging the whole sky and are providing a view of the Milky Way in its entirety. Hence approximately a view of our Galaxy! Our Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, that is a central bulge of old, yellow, stars at which long and whirling arms of young, blue, stars, and of dust, are originating. Our Galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. Our Sun -with us- is lying in one of the arms, about 27,000 light-years from center. Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is an infrared survey of the sky which was managed by the University of Massachusetts as the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was responsible for the data processing. Project was completed in March 2003. picture courtesy Atlas Image obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation