Leona Lipe, age 11, of Fredericktown, Mo., for her question:

Where is the center of the Milky Way?

In our latitudes at this time of year, the pale haze of the Milky Way loops almost up to the top of the sky. It arches behind the stars from the northwestern horizon to the southeast. Hour by hour through the night its position changes and season by season it changes its place in the sky.

In winter we see a skimpy section of the Milky Way and in summer we are cheated out of a great deal of its extra beauty. This hazy arch of ghostly white light over the night sky is, of course, our view of the staggering galaxy, which is our home in the heavens. It is an enormous system of some 100 billion orbiting stars. Our sun with its family is but one of countless solar systems in the Milky Way.

The vast system is shaped like a flat pinwheel with a star crowded hub and star strewn arms spiraling out from the center. We are far from the teeming center and we have an edgewise view of a stupendous pinwheel. We look straight across the star-studded disc as if it were a saucer at eye level. In the opposite parts of the sky we see the thinly populated arms around the outer rim of the galaxy.

Seen from the Earth, the Milky Way circles the skies around the globe. Half is seen by each hemisphere and we see different sections with the changing seasons. Telescope plates have been assembled to show the Earth's total view of the Milky Way. It is a long flat streamer of light, somewhat thicker in the center and thinner toward the edges, just as you would expect. The wider, central section is, of course, the center of the Milky Way.

This section appears in our summer skies near the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer. But we are cheated of most of its ghostly light. For the galaxy is strewn with gaseous clouds that blot out the glory of the stars beyond. There are such trailing dark clouds or nebulae between us and most of the teeming heart of the Milky Way. In this part of the sky they form a long dark rift that cuts the hazy light into two streams. In one place, the Great Star Cloud in Sagittarius, however, the cosmic clouds part and we get a peephole view of the teeming center of the Milky Way.

Telescope plates show countless bright pinpoints of many of these swarming stars. But ordinary light cannot pierce the nebulae between us and the heart of the galaxy. However, pictures of the crowded center have been shown by infrared light, which can penetrate these cosmic gases. Stars are nuclear powerhouses pouring out radio and other electromagnetic energy. And radio telescopes pick up crowded signals from this teeming section of the sky.