MILKY WAY Definition & Meaning

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Milky Way

[ mil-kee wey ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

Astronomy.

the spiral galaxy containing our solar system: with the naked eye it appears as a faint luminous band stretching across the heavens, composed of approximately a trillion stars, most of which are too distant to be seen individually.

Milky Way

noun

the diffuse band of light stretching across the night sky that consists of millions of faint stars, nebulae, etc, within our Galaxy
another name for the Galaxy

Milky Way

/ ��ĭ��′��ŧ /

The spiral galaxy that contains our solar system. Made up of an estimated two hundred billion stars or more, it is seen from Earth as an irregular band of hazy light across the night sky. The solar system is located in one of the revolving spiral arms, about 50 light-years north of the galactic plane and some 27,700 light-years from the galaxy's center, which lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It takes approximately 250 million years for the solar system to orbit the galactic center, which is believed to contain a massive black hole. The Milky Way measures about 100,000 light-years in diameter and is the second largest galaxy, after the Andromeda Galaxy, in the cluster known as the Local Group.
See also spiral galaxy

Milky Way

The galaxy to which our sun belongs.

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Notes

The Milky Way is also the swath of light in the night sky produced by the other stars in the galaxy.

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of Milky Way¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, translation of Latin via lactea; galaxy

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of Milky Way¹

C14: translation of Latin via lactea

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Because the SMC contains approximately twenty percent of the heavy elements of the Milky Way, it is believed to closely resemble the cosmic environment of the early universe from 10 billion years ago.

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In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei used the newly invented telescope to show that the Milky Way was composed of a huge number of faint stars.

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In fact, there are more microbes in our gut than there are stars in the Milky Way.

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Yet recent images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope seem to contradict that notion by showing protoplanetary disks in a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

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It's the first time that scientists have witnessed clumps of stars assembling to form a galaxy like our own Milky Way and holds clues as to how the Universe was formed.

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