The Milky Way Galaxy as dipicted in the USS Voyager's Astrometrics Lab in 2374
The USS Enterprise approaching the Galactic Barrier
The Milky Way is a spiral Galaxy in which most of recorded history takes place.
The Milky Way is approximately thirteen billion years old and 100,000 light-years across, 15,000 light-years deep at the galactic core and contains approximately 500,000 stars which orbit the galactic core over a period of around 220 million years. Somewhat unusually the Galaxy is enveloped in an energy field known as the galactic barrier. A similar field, the Great Barrier encloses much of the Galactic Core. Both fields were created by the Q to protect the Galaxy from a gang of powerful malicious beings (TNG Miniseries: The Q Continuum).
In addition to the main body of the Milky Way the Galaxy has a number of smaller companion bodies most notably the smaller and larger Magellanic Clouds. The Galaxy is also in the process of absorbing a dwarf Galaxy SagDEG. The Milky Ways' Nearest neighbour is the Andromeda Galaxy some 2.2 million light years away.
The Galaxy is naturally subdivided into a number of arms, with the Federation and its neighbours mostly occupying the Orion Arm. However for the sake of standardised navigation the Federation and most other galactic powers divide the Galaxy into four equal segments; the Quadrants.
Given the huge size of the Galaxy and the limited velocities available at Warp speed a number of races use networks subspace pathways to navigate the galaxy. Some are natural such as those formally controlled by the Vaadwaur where as others are artificial constructs such as the Borg Transwarp and Iconian Gateway networks or the Bajoran wormhole.
Arms of the Milky Way
(radiating from the centre clockwise)
- 3 KPC Arm
- Norma Arm
- Crux Arm
- Carina Arm
- Orion Arm
- Perseus Arm
- Outer Arm
- Scutum Arm
- Sagittarius Arm
External Links
- Milky Way Galaxy article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
- Milky Way article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.