Milky Way

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.

Milky Way (disambiguation)

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.

Milky Way may also refer to:

Places

Film and television

Films

Music

Songs

Milky Way (chocolate bar)

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.

American version

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".