Carol White, age 17, of Lansing, Mich., for her question:

 How far are we from the Milky Way?

A young deer might ask her mother where the forest is that everyone always talks about. The answer, of course, is that the trees and greenery around her are all part of the forest, just as we are in the Milky Way. It is made up of the stars that crowd our skies, plus many more stars our eyes cannot see. Our Earth and its family, the solar system, are parts of the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is shaped somewhat like a giant pinwheel, with the thickest region of crowded stars in the center. When we look at the pale Milky Way arching over the sky, we are looking across the flat wheel. Our solar system is about two thirds of the distance from the center to the outside edge of the Milky Way. Out here, far from the crowded center, the stars are fewer and farther apart, but they and we are all members of the vast Milky Way.