Using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, astronomers have come up with one of the most accurate measurements of mass of the Milky Way galaxy.
While previous research dating back several decades provided estimates for our galaxy’s mass, ranging between 500 billion to three trillion solar masses, according to the latest measurements, Milky Way weighs about 1.5 trillion solar masses (one solar mass is the mass of our Sun).
The measurement includes all the stars and planets, dust and gas, as well as the four-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center.