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[-] thedarkfly@feddit.nl 71 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When we look at the sky, there is a line where there is way more stars than usual. This line goes all the way around the sky. This was called the milky way by the Greeks because it was like a road sparkled with milk drops. At some point, we deduced that we were in a group of stars arranged in a flat disk. Later, we realized that some weird space clouds (nebulae) were much further away than we thought and were actually other huge groups of stars like our own that we named galaxies, still after milk.

There are more details me course. Even along the line in the sky drawn by the milky way, there is one side where there is much more stars and dust than the other. We deduced that we were at the edge of the disk and the bright region was the center of our galaxy. Also, the amount of gas and dust that block certain types of light that teach us that our galaxy has arms.

[-] Hobbes@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago

Which other galaxies are named after milk?

[-] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The word galaxy itself comes from the old Greek word for milk, so all galaxies are named after milk.

[-] Hobbes@startrek.website 2 points 1 year ago

Cool. I was trying to figure out if there was a bovine with the root word Andromeda in it. Because there are dromedary animals. But even do that only got me as far as one Galaxy.

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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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