The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name "milky" is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. The term "Milky Way" is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos, "milky circle"). From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies—now estimated to number as many as 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that has a diameter usually considered to be about 100,000–120,000 light-years but may be 150,000–180,000 light-years. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars, although this number may be as high as one trillion. There are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 27,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust called the Orion Arm. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole.
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.
Milky Way may also refer to:
The Milky Way bar is a chocolate bar manufactured and distributed by the Mars confectionery company. The American version of the Milky Way bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered with milk chocolate and is very similar to the Mars bar sold in other countries. The non-US Milky Way bar, on the other hand, is not topped with caramel.
The Milky Way bar was created in 1923 by Frank C. Mars and originally manufactured in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The name and taste were taken from a famed malted milk drink (milkshake) of the day – not the Earth’s galaxy, as many contend.
On March 10, 1925, the Milky Way trademark was registered in the U.S., claiming a first-use date of 1922. In 1924, the Milky Way bar was introduced nationally and sold $800,000 that year. The chocolate for the chocolate coating was supplied by Hershey's.
By 1926 it came out in two flavors, chocolate nougat with milk chocolate coating, and vanilla nougat with a dark chocolate coating, each for a nickel. In June 1932, the Milky Way bar was sold as a two piece bar, but just four years later, in 1936, the chocolate and vanilla were separated. The vanilla version, with a dark chocolate coating, was called "Forever Yours" and it was produced until 1979. In 1989, Forever Yours was reintroduced and renamed "Milky Way Dark," and later "Milky Way Midnight".
The Milky Way (French: La Voie lactée) is a 1969 film directed by Luis Buñuel. It stars Laurent Terzieff, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Georges Marchal and Michel Piccoli. Buñuel later called The Milky Way the first in a trilogy (along with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty) about “the search for truth."
The title of the film comes from the fact that original name for the Milky Way was the Way of St. James which directed pilgrims from northern Europe to Spain.
Today, critical reception for The Milky Way is strongly positive.
In the film, two men travel the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela and meet embodiments of various Catholic heresies along the way. These religious events are based on actual historical documents. For instance, the archbishop whose corpse is exhumed and publicly burned is based on Archbishop Carranza of Toledo. The film ends with the following text:
The Milky Way plays with time. The two main characters often encounter individuals in the dress of various time periods throughout history, or historical events take place in the modern setting of the film, including scenes from the life of Jesus Christ. In his autobiography, Buñuel explains that he wanted to put Jesus Christ in the film because he "wanted to show him as an ordinary man, laughing, running, mistaking his way, preparing to shave — to show, in other words, all those aspects completely alien to our traditional iconography."
The Milky Way is a 1936 comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. Directed by comedy veteran Leo McCarey, the film was written by Grover Jones, Frank Butler and Richard Connell based on a play of the same name by Lynn Root and Harry Clork which was presented on Broadway in 1934.
An example of the popular screwball comedy genre of the time, and critically Harold Lloyd's most successful talkie, it tells the story of a Brooklyn milkman who becomes middleweight boxing champion. The Milky Way features supporting performances by Adolphe Menjou and Verree Teasdale.
Timid milkman Burleigh Sullivan (Lloyd) becomes involved in a brawl which ends up with Speed McFarland, the world middleweight champion being knocked out cold (he never in fact threw a punch; he merely ducked to get out of the way of a punch which brought the champ down).
McFarland's boss, the crooked Gabby Sloan (Adolphe Menjou), decides to promote Sullivan in a series of fixed fights that will culminate in him being knocked out in a real fight with McFarland. Against all the odds, Sullivan triumphs and becomes world champion.
Milky Way (Bosnian: Mliječni put) is a 2000 Bosnian film directed by Faruk Sokolović.
A million stars above me
only one life to count them all
A thousand years of wishes for a simple man
Milky Way
Look as far as the eye can see
Try, if you can, to understand
I'm just a man of a planet in a galaxy
Milky Way
** We are children of the universe
We are the first
One by one we seek to reach the stars
The future's ours
People are people
We all live to play this game
We turn on the wheel by stairways to the stars
Milky Way
** Repeat
* Repeat
Milky Way