The brightest strip in the night sky is not a Milky Way galaxy!
The brightest strip in the night sky, which our ancestors christened the Milky Way and which astronomers of the last century have "defined" as a galaxy, is not a galaxy in its own right at all. It is a transverse view into the two energy bridges of the Cosmic Hierarchy of the Solar System, and the two highest ones we can see with the naked eye. It is the level 8 bridge (with its length of 295 million light years) and even more the level 9 bridge (with its length of 3585 million light years).
It is unfortunate that traditional science had not yet recognised our Cosmic Hierarchy. Actually, we already know all the levels of this hierarchy, except for just level 4, where we arrogantly placed our most beautiful and largest "wish galaxy" of the Milky Way. After we have recognised the really beautiful Andromeda galaxy at a distance of about 2 million light years,
it was immediately postulated that we ourselves must live in a galaxy that is no smaller and at least as beautiful. But by doing so, we have completely obstructed the recognition of the Cosmic Hierarchy of the Solar System. The extent of the fourth level of this hierarchy is only 13.5 thousand light years. Only then comes the level of the Large Magellanic Cloud (with its extension of 165 thousand light years), and only then the level 6 of the Andromeda group of galaxies, with its extension of 2 million light years.
This cosmic scaling of distances (of exactly 12.1428) also defined all the traditionally found constants of all traditional physics. Traditional science didn't notice that either. Nature is so beautifully simple when we try to understand it rather than dictate to it how it should conform to our ideas.