Questions and Answers

Why is our galaxy called the Milky Way?

Some people believe that the name of our galaxy came from the Greeks who observed the sky and thought that it looked like the breast filled with milk and that milk was scattered in the whole sky or some baby angel has suckled and squeezed it very hard which caused the milk to spread all over the sky.

In the night when we look up to sky, billion and millions of stars scattered around the sky gives it a milky look from the earth. When we look in the galactic centre you see a white fog like milk along the sky and the number of stars cannot be differentiated with the naked eye or we can say it is impossible and hence look as milk. With the invention of telescope we came to know that they are stars but before that it only appeared as milk because people were not confirmed that they were stars. It has appeared as the cloud to our eyes. When Galileo observed it with his telescope he came to know that what appear milky was actually millions and billions of individual stars and also he came to know the fact that it was nearly the end of galaxy and there are many more galaxies in the universe.

Actually the word “galaxy” is derived from the Greek word. In Greek Milky Way is known as “via Lactea”. “Via” means way or we can say path or road and “Lactea” means milk.

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