Talk:Milky Way

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List of names for the Milky Way was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 27 March 2024 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Milky Way. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Milky Way was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 18, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
July 14, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted
August 9, 2013	Good article nominee	Listed
January 4, 2025	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Current status: Delisted good article

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This article was previously nominated for deletion. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

Material from Milky Way Galaxy was split out into Milky Way (mythology) on 27 August 2005. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted so long as the latter page exists. Please leave this template in place to link the article histories and preserve this attribution. The former page's talk page can be accessed at Talk:Milky Way Galaxy.

There is a request, submitted by Catfurball (talk), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.
The rationale behind the request is: Important.

GA Reassessment

Milky Way

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: No major edits to the article since posted at GAR, no one has indicated that they want to make the necessary improvements Z1720 (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

There are some citation needed tags, unreliable source? tags in the article, The "Appearance" has had an orange "additional sources needed" banner and the "Satellite observations" has had an orange "update needed" banner. Real4jyy (talk) 03:22, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Semi-protected edit request on April 2025

I'd like to correct the transcription of 天の川(Etymology > Common Names > River of Heaven). amanogawa is here appropriate. Nitro7cttu (talk) 18:09, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Please provide a source. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course I can (because I just have to provide a Japanese dictionary as a source), but I wonder if it might be a bit redundant to present a source for transcription of a common word. Nitro7cttu (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

If the current content is not correct, then a source is not redundant but rather essential. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:41, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Wrong Number of Stars

This wiki says 100 million stars, but the truth is 100 billion or more. Please fix someone thats registered.

src https://www.space.com/26078-how-many-stars-are-there.html 84.210.159.15 (talk) 00:26, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Your claim is incorrect. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:30, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah I see it correct now, thanks! :) 84.210.159.15 (talk) 13:32, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Both figures are wrong, Milky way has at least 400 billion stars, for total mass of our galaxy, around 16%, are stars, total mass of our galaxy with in 175 000 light years, or radius of 87500 light years, is estimated to be between 1.54 trillion solar masses and upwards. 16% of that mass, are stars. Average star is about a quarter the mass of our Sun. Simple arithmetic's gives you figure of at least 1 trillion stars. However, 400 billion is current figure science likes to work with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-12804-15 (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Please provide a source. Johnjbarton (talk) 05:39, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

When I publish my paper, I am still trying to verify some data, including actual size of the Milky Way Galaxy, but all data points to much larger galaxy and much heavier galaxy. With-in 127kly, data indicates a lot more mass, and a lot larger galaxy. Milky Way Galaxy is most massive galaxy in the local group, that is now certain, just the size is much harder to calculate, and therefore the noumber of stars. 1 trillion stars is based purely on total mass of visible matter with in 127000 light years. Research data indicates galaxy is very likely much larger, depending on which data points are used. Based on broadest data sets, our galaxy is about 2.1 trillion solar mases contained with in 175000 light years. ~2026-12804-15 (talk) 00:19, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Galaxy rotation curve for the Milky Way

This figure seems outdated (2004-2007) compared with the data in Local standard of rest. Ra-raisch (talk) 21:43, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

@Ra-raisch: You're free to update it with reliable sources, of course. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:48, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

The probem is, that all authors deliver varying speeds. Just the curve seems outdated. So best I could do is to delete that. Ra-raisch (talk) 21:53, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Here is a newer curve in Fig.3 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.09466 I cannot say if it is correct but this paper is cited by CODATA as reference. Ra-raisch (talk) 21:59, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, I think the "most reliable" one would do, if not, someone will let you know. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:02, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

If it was that easy I would have done this straight away ... I have no experience with grafics in wiki and do not want to copy that from arXiv without permission anyway. So I can only delete it and maybe revise some of the text. Ra-raisch (talk) 22:12, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Me neither, that's why I don't ask. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:16, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

The link you posted goes to a paper published by AAS under the CC-BY 4.0 license as

Eilers, A. C., Hogg, D. W., Rix, H. W., & Ness, M. K. (2019). The circular velocity curve of the Milky Way from 5 to 25 kpc. The Astrophysical Journal, 871(1), 120.

The license requires that the reference accompany the image.

Johnjbarton (talk) 23:40, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

By "this figure" I assume you mean this figure:

Johnjbarton (talk) 23:25, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi all I've created a detailed new plot with actual data and updated the page.ScienceDawns (talk) 08:44, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

@ScienceDawns You removed the sources and did not include a new one. I want to update the caption but I want to read the source of the data first. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:36, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

References

[1]
Eilers, A. C., Hogg, D. W., Rix, H. W., & Ness, M. K. (2019). The circular velocity curve of the Milky Way from 5 to 25 kpc. The Astrophysical Journal, 871(1), 120.